The Missouri S&T baseball team struggled for offense in the first game of Saturday's doubleheader with Northern Kentucky, then couldn't recover from an early deficit in the second game as the Norse took both Great Lakes Valley Conference games by scores of 5-0 and 12-5 at the S&T Baseball Field.
After the teams played scoreless ball over the first four innings of the opener, the Norse broke through in the fifth against Miner starter David Birkby when Aaron Mentz hit a leadoff homer. NKU then knocked out the Miner starter an inning later after Kevin Dusold delivered a two-run double to make it 3-0.
The Norse would add another run in the inning and one in the seventh to back the four-hit pitching of Ryan Schmidt. Thomas McCormick had two of the Miners' four hits in game one.
In game two, the Norse scored in the first only to see the Miners answer in the bottom half of the frame on Yaimel Javier-Cury's sacrifice fly that scored Gerad Fox.
However, the Norse got a leadoff homer from Jon Back off S&T starter Matt Campbell in the third, then Jack Ambrose belted a three-run homer later in what turned out to be a five-run inning for the Norse to give them a 6-1 lead.
S&T cut into the lead with single runs in the third on a run-scoring triple by McCormick and in the fourth on an RBI double by Andrew Vance. But the Norse put the game away by putting four more runs on the board in the fifth, stringing together six hits in the frame to extend the lead to 10-3.
The Miners did get a leadoff homer from Zac Carter in the fifth and an RBI single from Vance in the eighth for their other two runs.
S&T had 13 hits in game two, with Vance and Louie Joseph getting three apiece and McCormick and Carter two each.
The Miners (8-11, 3-5 GLVC) will host Harris-Stowe in a non-conference doubleheader Tuesday at the S&T Baseball Field before opening a four-game weekend series with Rockhurst Friday in Rolla.
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