NORMAL, Ill. — After a surprisingly disappointing end to the second-best baseball season in Murray State history a year ago, the Racers have returned to winning ways at the Missouri Valley Conference Championship.

Easy, though, their opening game with former Ohio Valley Conference rival Belmont was not tonight. Even after taking an early four-run lead, then responding to the Bruins’ tying it by pushing back out to a five-run lead, the new Valley co-regular-season champions could not put together the knockout punch … then almost were knocked out themselves.

An incredible nine-run fourth inning took Belmont from the outhouse to the penthouse before the Racers spent the next few innings trying to catch them, which they did in the seventh. Finally, Jonathan Hogart followed Charlie Jury’s leadoff double with the game-winning sacrifice fly in the bottom of the 11th to give the Racers a wild 15-14 win at Duffy Bass Field on the Illinois State campus. 

The Racers are now 36-13 for the season, while Belmont slips to 24-31. Murray State now faces Valley arch rival Southern Illinois in a game set for 7 Thursday night. However, that is subject to change as the Racers’ game tonight was supposed to start at 4 but did not begin until 5:45 after the first two games of the day lasted well beyond their expected durations. This was because those games were so high-scoring as Belmont defeated Bradley, 11-7, this morning and UIC and SIU engaged in a slugfest before UIC prevailed, 19-17. SIU is the No. 3 seed in the tournament.

This is Murray State’s first win in this event since its first visit to The Valley tourney two seasons ago in Terre Haute, Indiana, where it defeated both Valparaiso and Missouri State in reaching the Final Four. 

Last year, the Racers entered the tourney in Evansville as the No. 2 seed but fell flat after compiling a 37-20 regular-season record, three wins shy of the 1975 team that was the first in school history to play in an NCAA Tournament. The Racers were knocked out in seven innings by Illinois-Chicago, then eliminated a few hours later by Valley powerhouse Indiana State. 

Drama seemed like the last thing possible tonight after the Racers hit Belmont with four runs in their first at-bat. Luke Mistone’s two-run single was followed by Will Vierling’s RBI single and Dan Tauken’s RBI sacrifice fly.

However, the Bruins — from whom the Racers took two out of three games in the next-to-last weekend of the regular season in Nashville — entered tonight’s game with a hot offense after this morning’s win over Bradley. A wild pitch and two singles immediately erased the Racers’ great start but, soon, they were back in command on Hogart’s two-run home run, an RBI double from Dom Decker and a two-run double from Tauken to return to the lead at 9-4 by the end of the second inning.

Things seemed to settle in the third before Belmont — not known as an offensive juggernaut — exploded in the fourth. Mike Sprockett’s three-run homer highlighted the nine-run inning that left the Bruins suddenly in possession of a 13-9 lead, and that is how the score would stay until Vierling’s two-run double scored two runs and cut the lead to 13-11 in the sixth. 

Sprockett’s RBI double in the seventh edged the lead back to 14-11 but Carson Garner — he of six RBIs, including a home run in the Racers’ 16-5 win over Missouri State last Thursday — tied it with one swing, a three-run blast to left-center field in the seventh, leaving the score all knotted at 14-14.

That is how things remained until the 11th, thanks, in large part, to Racer relief pitchers Jacob Hustedde and Graham Kelham. Both pitched 3 2/3 innings and allowed only four hits between them and, most importantly, only one run to the suddenly-explosive Bruins. Kelham held Belmont scoreless and only allowed one hit, while getting six strikeouts. 

At the dish, Murray State was outhit,  16-13, but had five players collect at least two RBIs. Hogart’s first-inning bomb was his only hit of the night but he had three RBIs and two runs scored. Garner walked four times and is only scored as having gone 1-for-2 but he also had three RBIs and scored three times. Vierling had three RBIs on two hits, as did Tauken on one hit. Mistone was 3-for-6 tonight with two RBIs and two runs scored and Dom Decker was 3-for-5 with an RBI and three runs scored. 

Murray State and SIU will be a meeting of two of the top offenses in The Valley, so the likelihood of high scores continuing Thursday seems very likely. Belmont will now face the loser of a game set for 11 Thursday morning between the team with whom  the Racers shared the regular-season crown — No. 2 Missouri State — and an Illinois State team that hammered Indiana State in the first game of the tourney on Tuesday. Belmont is slated to play at 3 p.m., ahead of Murray State meeting the Salukis.

To follow the Racers’ progress, tourney games are being aired on ESPN+, while goracers.com also has Live Stats available.