CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa – Showing Iowa and NCAA Division III who the Texas Tigers are, #15/19 East Texas Baptist University came from seven runs down for a 21-7 shellacking of #2 Salisbury University eliminating the 2021 national champions and 2022 national runners-up. ETBU is now won 42 games on the year and is 2-1 in the national championship tournament after winning their first elimination game. They now have scored 20+ runs in three games with two coming in the post season.
 
"Basically, all I can do to describe what we did is this team doesn't quit," said head coach Jared Hood. "They kept playing to the end as a coach that's great to see. That's it."
 
Posting 21 hits and four home runs, Brett Wagner was 4-of-6 with two RBI. Carson Wilson, Ben La, and Nicolas Chavez all had three hits. Lea led the team with five RBI while Chavez added four, Wilson three RBI, Jordan Hara two RBI, and Jacob Evangelista and Nick Massarini with one RBI.
 
Evangelista put his name in the record books breaking Tim Brown's 43-year old single season hit record of 85 with two hits now posting 86 hits this year. Lea hit his 24^th home run of the year while Hara, Wagner, and Chavez all collected a home run.
 
Jagger Neely started the game going just 1.2 innings giving up seven earned runs on seven hits with no strikeouts. Matthew Irwin came in and shut down Salisbury for the next five innings as the Sea Gulls didn't record a run and were struck out five times. Cody Johnson worked 0.1 innings with a strikeout and Braden Karnes finished the eighth and ninth innings with two strikeouts.
 
Salisbury struck early and loud with six runs in the first inning and one in the second for a 7-0 lead. ETBU fought back to cut the lead to four, 7-3, with three runs in the bottom of the second. That started seven straight innings of scoring 21 unanswered runs.
 
It was a five-run fourth inning that put ETBU on top. Down two, 7-5, Lea hit a grand slam home run to bust open the game for a 9-7 lead. ETBU then tacked on five more runs in the fifth inning including a two-run home run from Hara. The sixth inning saw Wagner record a two-run homer for a 10-run lead, 17-7. In the eighth inning, Chavez finished off the scoring with a home run to left field for the 21-7 win.
 
ETBU will now face Lynchburg at 1:15 p.m. on Monday and will have to defeat them twice to advance to the championship game round.