Caguas, Puerto Rico – The UConn baseball team (0-2) lost to the Missouri Tigers (1-1), 11-7, on Saturday night at Estadio Sola Morales.
UConn took its only lead of the night in the third inning after a bases loaded hit by pitch to Grant MacArthur and Maddix Dalena sacrifice fly made it 2-1 Huskies.
After Missouri took a 4-2 lead in the fifth inning, Ryan Daniels blasted his first home run of the year, a solo shot, to cut the deficit to one.
The sixth inning proved to be the difference as Missouri plated six runs in the frame.
UConn didn't go down without a fight, scoring four runs in the seventh inning to cut the deficit to 10-7. Caleb Shpur and Sam Biller delivered back-to-back RBI doubles and team captain Bryan Padilla capped the scoring with a two-run double.
Rob Rispoli had a career-night at the plate, collecting his first career hit as part of a three-hit night. Rispoli stole a pair of bases and scored two runs in the ballgame.
Biller (three hits) and Shpur (two) also put together multi-hit efforts.
Left-hander Charlie West shined on the mound by throwing 2.0 shutout innings with no hits allowed and tied a career-high with four strikeouts.
Ian Cooke started the game and struck out six in 4.1 innings on the bump. Cooke notched his 200th strikeout with a punch out in the first inning. He is the 14th Husky all-time to punch out 200 batters in his UConn career.
Evan Hamberger, Sam Hutchinson and Connor Lane all made their UConn debuts on Saturday night.
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