Naperville, Ill. - The Thunder baseball team dropped a pair of games on Saturday in a road tilt against the North Central Cardinals. The Thunder rallied late in the lid lifter of Saturday's twinbill but fell short in a 12-10 defeat before dropping the nightcap 13-5. Wheaton ends the day with a record of 6-12 overall and 0-3 in CCIW action while the Cardinals improved to 7-10 overall and 2-0 in conference play. Wheaton will step back into non-conference action on Tuesday with a road game at IIT with first pitch scheduled for 3 pm.

Game one saw a seesaw battle through the first half of the game before the Cardinals took control in the later innings. North Central jumped to 2-0 lead in the bottom of the first but Wheaton halfed the deficit on Daniel Hillyer's sacrifice fly in the top of the second inning. John Michael Scumaci's homer in the half of the second put the hosts back up two but Wheaton answered again in the top of the third, taking the lead on a two-run single by Hillyer and adding a run when Kyle Wu stole third and added the last 90 feet to score on a corresponding wild pitch to put Wheaton ahead 5-3. 

North Central pulled to within 5-4 in the bottom of the fifth and then took control of the game, sandwiching five runs in the bottom of the sixth inning and another three in the bottom of the seventh inning around a two-run Thunder seventh that saw an RBI single by Luke Hamm and a sac fly by Matt Nelson. Wheaton pulled to within 12-9 on a Wu single to plate Joe Klein and Noah Yi's ground out in the top of the eighth inning. The Thunder would push across another run in the top of the ninth on Jacob Snyder's groundout to cut the final gap to 12-10.  

North Central's 12 runs came on 12 hits with two defensive miscues. Wheaton plated 10 runs on 14 hits with one error. Nate Barker allowed six earned on eight hits over five innings to be saddled with the loss while the Thunder bullpen combined to allow six runs on four hits in three innings of work. Kyle Wu and Mason Diel led the offense with three runs and three hits apiece. Noah Yi added two runs on two hits and Luke Hamm drove in two runs with two hits. Daniel Hillyer also had three runs batted in.

Joe Klein launched the Thunder ahead early in game two of the doubleheader with a three-run home run in the top of the first inning but the Cardinals chipped away pulling back one run in the bottom of the first and pulling even at 3-3 with two in the bottom of the second. Klein briefly reinstated the Thunder advantage with a solo shot in the top of the third for his fifth round-tripper of the season, but the Cardinals jumped ahead in the home half, scoring five runs and adding four more in the bottom of the fourth to take a 12-4 lead. Both teams would add a run in the eight innint with Snyder doubling to right-center to score Hillyer to account for Wheaton's tally.

Klein tallied three hits with four runs driven in for the guests in game two. Noah Yi and Jacob Snyder each added another two hits for the Thunder.