Western Illinois was held scoreless through seven innings by former Leatherneck and current Eastern left-handed pitcher Tyler Kapruan, leading the Panthers to a 13-8 win Thursday at Coaches Stadium.
Kapraun allowed a season-low two hits and five total baserunners through those seven innings, which allowed Eastern (27-20, 15-9) to take a 10-0 lead heading into the eighth inning.
“We needed it as a program anyway and going against your former team, it’s always great to throw a good game against them,” Kapraun said.
Kapraun faced his former team for the first time since he left the Leathernecks after two seasons.
“Welcome to 2025 college baseball and college athletics,” said Western Illinois head coach Terry Davis. “One day they’re here and the next day they’ve gone somewhere else. As far as that goes, it just is what it is.”
Eastern pitching coach Max Feske, who was the pitching coach and recruiting coordinator at Western Illinois last season, hugged Kapraun after the game to congratulate him on the quality start.
“We talk about the job of a pitcher being just making consecutive quality pitches until skip decides he’s done or the game ends,” Feske said. “He did a really good job of doing that without allowing any kind of externals or anything that doesn’t really matter between the lines to get in the way.”
Kapraun said he started the outing with a lot of excitement but was able to reel himself in. He threw 74 pitches and didn’t even allow a baserunner to get to third base.
Junior left-handed pitcher Jack Potteiger entered to pitch in the eighth, and after a strikeout, he ran into some control issues and allowed two walks and a single leading to the first run of the game for Western Illinois (18-30, 9-16) scored on a bases loaded walk.
After a hit by pitch brought in another runner, sophomore right-hander Bryce Riggs took the mound and struck the first hitter out that he faced. With two outs in the inning, Riggs walked a run in and gave up an RBI single followed by a grand slam to cap off an eight-run inning to make the score 10-8.
“I saw it coming. After [Potteiger] walked a couple of guys, I saw it coming. And so we had to rush Riggs in there, and I don’t think he was ready,” EIU’s head coach Jason Anderson said. “And then they home run and that was the worst-case scenario, but it happened, we scored, and luckily, they picked me up, because that was my mistake.”
The Panther’s offense answered with three runs in the bottom of the eighth.
Junior right-handed pitcher Dalton Boruff closed out the game by getting the first three Leathernecks he faced out in the top of the ninth.
Kapraun got credit for his sixth win of the season.
Offensively, Eastern scored nine earned runs. Out of the 12 players who got at-bats, seven had multi-hit games and all but one of them had an RBI. Senior infielder Brett Stanley was the only one in the game amongst both teams to have three hits.
Both teams head back to Coaches Stadium tomorrow for a 11 p.m. first pitch in game two of the series. Senior right-handed pitcher Tyler Conklin is slated to get the start for the Panthers, who would become regular season champions in the Ohio Valley Conference with a series sweep.
This series is the last one before the OVC tournament that starts on May 21, and Eastern currently sits in first place in the conference while Western Illinois sits in ninth.
Bryce Parker can be reached at 581-2812 or at baparker2@eiu.edu.
