The Buena Vista baseball team rolled off two more wins on Friday afternoon at Simpson College and became the first Iowa Conference team to reach the 20-win plateau for the year.  BVU blanked the Storm, 4-0, in the opener before hanging on to win 7-5 in the nightcap.

The Beavers did all of their scoring in the opener in the first inning, getting a pair of hits and taking advantage of some wildness by Simpson pitching.  After loading the bases with no outs, Neil Marshall scored the game's first run on a wild pitch before a sacrifice fly from Weston Foxx made it 2-0.  Later in the inning, Ryan Titman and Nick Schlecht each drove home a run on a bases loaded walk.

That was more than enough for starter Jon Ringblom, who allowed just one base runner to reach third base.  He finished the contest allowing just three hits, walking one and striking out nine.

BVU totaled only five hits in the contest, including two from Joe Paletta.

The Storm scored their first run of the day in their half of the first inning to take an early 1-0 lead, but junior Scott Harris settled down after that.

BVU evened things up in the second on a Brandon Wessels RBI double before he came around to score on a Paletta single to right.

Simpson then tied things back up at 2-2 in the bottom half on a bases loaded walk and that's the way things stood until the sixth.

BVU broke open the game with four runs in the inning, including a big two-run double from Schlecht.  Bryce Wessels and Marshall also added RBI singles in the inning to make it a 6-2 contest.

Junior Lucas Hadaway came on in relief to start the seventh for the Beavers and allowed a runner to score on a fielder's choice, but got out of the jam without further damage.  He then struck out the side in the eighth before BVU added a run in the ninth when Jeremy Lambert singled to center to make it 7-2.

Ian Grigsby came on in the ninth and retired the first two batters before Simpson (13-13, 6-10 IIAC) put a string of hits together to score a pair of runs, but the junior righthander struck out the final batter to secure the two-run victory.

Lambert and Marshall each recorded three hitss and an RBI in the contest with Paletta and Foxx each adding two.  As a team, the Beavers pounded out 14, despite just two for extra bases.

Harris scattered six hits over his six innings, allowing three runs, while matching his career-high with nine strikeouts and walking four. 

Buena Vista improves to 21-5 overall (10-4 IIAC) and kept pace with Loras College (10-4 IIAC) and Wartburg College (11-3 IIAC) who also picked up DH sweeps on the day.

The Beavers and Storm will wrap up the four-game weekend series on Saturday with another doubleheader which has been pushed up to a 10:00am start due to rain in the forecast for the afternoon.