The Kent State baseball team (24-18, 11-7 Mid-American Conference) played a special doubleheader versus Oakland University on Tuesday, as the games were shortened to seven innings apiece and were free to the public.

All of this came in celebration of Kent State President Beverly Warren’s Inauguration Week.

Game 1: Kent State 5, Oakland 4 (F/8)

Kent State hung on to a 5-4 narrow victory in the first game of the doubleheader, which started at 3 p.m.

Freshman Tim DalPorto got things going for the Flashes in the second inning with an RBI double scoring freshman Dylan Rosa.

Senior Sawyer Polen got an RBI on a fielder’s choice in the same inning.

Rosa hit a two-run homer in the fourth inning to give Kent State a 4-0 lead but Oakland made a comeback.

After a three-run seventh inning, the game was tied at 4-4.

That was when Polen stepped up big and hit a walk-off home run in the eighth inning to win the game for Kent State.

Freshman relief pitcher Zach Willeman picked up the win to move to 1-1. Sophomore Jared Skolnicki went 5.1 innings, allowing only one earned run as the starter.

Game 2: Oakland 4, Kent State 3 

Oakland was able to pull a win out of the final game of Tuesday’s doubleheader, which started at 6 p.m., against Kent State.

Senior Tommy Monnot started out the game offensively by a ground-rule double in the second inning, followed by freshman Luca Fuscardo’s RBI single to give Kent State a 2-0 lead.

Oakland tied the game in the third inning at two and then pulled away in the fourth and made it 3-2.

Kent State got its final run in the sixth off an RBI single by Rosa but it wasn’t enough as they fell 4-3 to Oakland.

Freshman Eli Kraus started on the mound and gave up three earned runs in 3.2 innings during the game.

Kent State will travel to play the University of Buffalo on Friday for the first of a three-game conference series.

Contact Andrew Bugel at [email protected].