Morningside opened GPAC Baseball Tournament play with a 6-0 shutout victory against Hastings.

Cody Selig pitched a three-hit shutout to lead Morningside to a 6-0 victory against Hastings in opening round action of the GPAC Baseball Tournament in Crete, Neb.

The Mustangs will take a 35-16 record into a Friday 9 a.m. contest against Dakota Wesleyan in the winner’s bracket final of the double-elimination Doane bracket. The winners of the Doane and Briar Cliff brackets will meet in the GPAC Tournament Championship Game on Tuesday, May 5, at the site of the highest seed.

Selig walked two and struck out five in his nine-inning gem. He retired the Broncos’ first 16 batters of the game before his bid for perfection ended when he struck Grant Kraus with a pitch with one out in the sixth inning.  Selig lost his no-hitter when Micah Lockerby singled with no outs in the seventh inning.

Selig improved his record to 9-1 and broke the Morningside record for pitching victories in a season he previously shared with Kirt Bennett (1989), Joel Rosacker (2002), Heath Horsley (2004), and Wade Morrison (2009).

The Broncos’ William Reynolds, this week’s GPAC Pitcher of the Week, retired Morningside’s first six batters of the game before the Mustangs broke through for three runs in the bottom of the third inning to take a 3-0 lead they never relinquished.

The Mustangs opened the third inning with back-to-back singles by Ryan DeVries and Cole Halgerson. Ryan Tegtmeier then laid down a sacrifice bunt that resulted in a two-base throwing error by Reynolds that enabled DeVries to score the game’s first run. Jacob Lamoreux followed with a RBI single that drove in Halgerson and Blake Meacham delivered a RBI single two outs later to make it 3-0.

Morningside added three more runs on a RBI single by Meacham in the fifth, a sacrifice fly by DeVries in the sixth, and a sacrifice bunt by Nathan DeChaine in the seventh.

Lamoreux, Meacham, DeVries, and Halgerson all had two singles to account for all but two of the Mustangs’ 10 hits.

Box Score