No. 20 Hilltoppers clinch series with 9-1 home win against MTSU

Published 7:45 pm Saturday, April 19, 2025

By Jeff Nations

Western Kentucky needed someone to cool down Middle Tennessee’s hard-hitting lineup Saturday at Nick Denes Field.

The Hilltoppers asked sophomore starting pitcher Drew Whalen to slow down the Blue Raiders, and the right-hander answered the call with seven strong innings to carry the Hilltoppers to a 9-1 win. The victory sealed another Conference USA series victory for the Tops, who took two out of three from MTSU.

Whalen earned the win after allowing just one earned run off five hits and a walk while striking out nine batters as No. 20 WKU (33-7 overall, 11-4 CUSA) improved to a stellar 24-1 at home this season — the Blue Raiders dealt the Tops their first loss at Nick Denes Field on Friday.

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“After the past couple of days, I feel like we just needed to come out here and really attack early and that’s kind of what I was trying to do,” Whalen said. “Just establish the fastball early and work off that, and I feel like in the first couple of innings that’s what I was able to do.”

The Hilltoppers grabbed a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the second inning when senior first baseman Kyle Hayes launched a first-pitch offering offer the left-field wall for a solo home run — Hayes’  third homer in three games against the Blue Raiders. It came shortly after Hayes left the field for a brief period in the top of the inning with a bloody nose.

“I get bloody noses all the time — it’s just something I have to live with, unfortunately,” Hayes said. “I got one at 3 a.m. last night, so it’s nothing new to me. Our trainer, Hunter (Schramm), he knows about it so he gave me something to block it up. But I saw the ball well this weekend, going back to Thursday. The past couple weeks I haven’t been feeling right. I’ve been hitting, but not the way I feel like I can. So Thursday afternoon before the game, I went into coach (Derek) Francis’ office, looked at some film for awhile, kind of bounced some ideas off each other. That’s what I love about the coaching staff — huge communication aspect between coach and player, really open to anything. So we bounced some ideas off each other, worked on it in BP (batting practice) and it paid off this week.”

After the Tops doubled their lead to 2-0 by scoring off an errant pickoff throw to first in the fourth, MTSU (18-22, 4-11 CUSA) broke through against Whalen in the top of the fifth with Cooper Clapp’s RBI single.

WKU answered in the bottom of the inning. Ryan Wideman stroked a two-run single to left, then Hayes ripped a full-count double off the wall in center to drive in another run. that prompted a pitching change, but the Tops got another run on Drew Barragan’s RBI single to cap the four-run rally and grab a 6-1 lead.

Hayes finished a 2-for-3 outing with a home run, a double, two RBIs, two runs scored and a walk. The senior finished the weekend a blazing hot 7-for-10 with three homers, a triple, a double, five RBIs, five runs scored, two walks and a stolen base.

“It’s one of those things where you always want to make sure someone’s picking it up,” WKU coach Marc Rardin said of Hayes. “People worry about Wideman, people worry about (Ethan) Lizama, people even worry about (Carlos) Vasquez up there at the top of the order — some of those early on at the top of the order. And then there’s Hayes, kind of hiding down there. And he starts getting the pitches, and he was taking advantage of it.”

The Tops added three more runs in the eighth as Reid Howard drove in one with an RBI single while another scored off an error. Vasquez made the final score 9-1 with a sacrifice fly later in the inning.

All that offense was more than enough for Whalen, who worked a career-high seven innings to earn his CUSA-leading eighth win and lower his earned run average to 1.86. Treyson Peters finished up with two scoreless innings out of the bullpen.

“Third game of a series when it’s a rubber match, we always talk about that third game, it’s just a juice game,” Rardin said. “It’s about energy. It’s about effort. It’s about will. And luckily a third game in a series like this, we got Drew Whalen. So that works.”

Wideman added a 2-for-5 day with a pair of RBIs, and Barragan was 2-for-3 with an RBI. The Tops totaled 10 hits in the win.

WKU stays home for a nonconference matchup Tuesday against Evansville at Nick Denes Field before hitting the road for a three-game series against CUSA rival FIU starting Friday in Miami.

Sports Editor, Bowling Green Daily News

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