SLIPPERY ROCK, Pa. – The Slippery Rock University baseball team cruised to a 12-2 victory in game one against Shippensburg University before losing game two in 10 innings, 10-9, for a doubleheader split Tuesday night at Jack Critchfield Park.
 
The non-conference split moves The Rock's record to 20-15 overall on the year. Shippensburg remains at .500 on the season after Tuesday's games with a 19-19 record.
 
Slippery Rock leadoff hitter Jake Nogalo went 6-for-8 with four runs scored, three RBI, two doubles and one home run from his spot atop The Rock's lineup.
 
Adam Urbania extended his hitting streak to 22 games with multi-hit performances in both games. On the day, Urbania was 5-for-9 at the plate in addition to scoring five runs, driving in two more and hitting his sixth home run of the season.
 
Cleanup hitter Alex Bell was 5-for-10 with two runs scored, two RBI and a pair of doubles.
 
GAME ONE: Slippery Rock 12 – Shippensburg 2
Freshman pitcher Alex Pantuso (2-2) delivered the best outing of his young career and the Slippery Rock bats totaled seven two-out RBI in SRU's 12-2 game-one victory.
 
Pantuso struck out a season-high seven batters and only allowed two runs and six hits over five innings to register his second victory of the year. Relief pitcher Zac Anderson made sure there wouldn't be a Shippensburg comeback in the opener by throwing two scoreless innings, which included three strikeouts, in relief of Pantuso.
 
Logan Brown set the tone for the opener with a two-run single in the first inning that gave Slippery Rock a lead it would never relinquish.
 
Shippensburg briefly made it a one-run game when it scored its first run of the game in the third inning, but Slippery Rock quickly put the game out of reach with six runs in the bottom half of the inning thanks in part to Urbania's homer and consecutive RBI-hits from Carson Kessler, Jordan Faretta, Ty Zimmerman and  Nogalo.
 
The Raiders managed to get one run back in the fourth before SRU concluded its impressive display of offense with four runs in the fifth inning en route to the victory.
 
Eight of The Rock's nine starters recorded hits in the opener, including three-hit efforts from Nogalo, Urbania, Bell and Kessler. SRU was 8-for-13 in two-out situations in game one.
 
GAME TWO: Shippensburg 10 – Slippery Rock 9 (10 Innings)
Slippery Rock opened up an early four-run lead in the nightcap before Shippensburg scored six runs only to have SRU mount a rally of its own to force extra innings with two late runs in its eventual 10-9 extra-inning loss.
 
Trailing 7-5 and down to its final two outs, Slippery Rock received a double by Christian Porterfield that brought Nogalo to the plate. After taking a ball on the first pitch of his at-bat, the senior shortstop drove the second pitch he saw over the centerfield wall to tie the game at 7-7 going into the seventh inning.
 
Innings seven through nine belonged to relief pitcher Geoff Sanner of Slippery Rock and the Raiders' Josh Kutchey (2-1). Both athletes were outstanding for their respective teams when they were needed the most. Sanner, who entered the game in the sixth inning, gave SRU four innings of one-hit, no run pitching. Kutchey nearly matched his counterpart, going 3.1 innings and giving up no runs.
 
The Raiders finally broke through in the 10th inning when Austin Allison and Ryan McMillen led off the inning with two straight singles against Anton Constantino (2-4), who subbed in for Sanner to start the inning. Following a strikeout and an intentional walk to set up a force out at any base, Dustin Labonte hit a sac fly that scored Allison. Shippensburg would close the inning with two more runs to take a 10-7 lead.
 
Tyler Walters and Urbania both laced one-out singles in the bottom of the 10th before being brought home on a Bell double to cut SU's lead down to 10-9, but Slippery Rock couldn't find a way to push the tying run across as Thomas Swartz secured the game's final two outs to give Shippensburg the win.
 
Nogalo and Walters were both 3-for-5 with two runs, two RBI and one home run in the loss. Walters' homer was his team-high ninth of the season and fifth in the last seven games.
 
SRU's best chance to win the game came in the eighth inning when The Rock had the bases loaded with only one out. However, Kutchey managed to force back-to-back shallow fly outs to keep Shippensburg alive.
 
Slippery Rock returns to Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference Western Division play when it opens up a four game series with Clarion University with a doubleheader on the road Friday at 1 p.m.