Concordia, KS - Red Raven freshman right-hander Ryan Leiker picked a good day to throw his first collegiate shutout of his career.  Leiker threw 126 total pitches in going the distance (9 innings) for the 1-0 shutout of the #5 seeded Thunderbirds of Cloud County in the second game of the best-of-three opening-round series.   With the victory, Leiker evens his season record to 6-6, however, more importantly, the #12 seeded Coffeyville forced a winner take all game three.

On the day, Leiker allowed zero runs on six hits while striking out six and walking two.  Leiker faced 34 batters over the nine innings and out of his 126 pitches, 79 were strikes.

Coffeyville had lost the first game of the series 10-4 the previous day while committing five errors in the game.  However, game #2 saw the Red Ravens shore up their defense in the field with an errorless game.  The Red Ravens were also able to turn two double plays on the day turning one in the bottom of the second and another in the bottom of the fifth to help escape a bases-loaded one-out jam.

Coffeyville scored their lone run in the top of the seventh.  Red Raven freshman Tyler Gundelfinger led off the seventh with a clean single up the middle.  After a pitching change for Cloud, freshman Tate Moody laid down a sacrifice bunt to move Gundelfinger to second.  A Quentin Platt foul out brought up Red Raven sophomore first baseman Ryan Ready with two outs.  Ready calmly stroked a single up the middle to score Gundelfinger from second.  

Game #3 will be played today (Friday, May 12th) at 1:00 pm at Lee Doyen Field in Concordia Kansas with the winning team advancing into the second round of the NJCAA Plains Regional Tournament next week which will be played at Eck Stadium on the campus of Wichita State University.  

Game #3's stream is available courtesy of Cloud County HERE!