Across two days, Missouri baseball lived on both sides of baseball’s extremes. Thursday evening was a gritty hold-on-tight victory; Friday was the biggest gut punch Jackson’s squad has received this season and brought a complete polar opposite side of a Missouri team for three and a half innings. Then, the Tigers awoke from their long nap.
The action wasn’t at all lacking in the complete tale of two victories across the span of two days. Let’s get into it.
GAME ONE
Mizzou didn’t get the smooth Thursday night
it hoped for on the mound, but it found enough offense and just enough late relief to squeeze out a 9–8 win over UIC at Taylor Stadium.
The Tigers came out fast, turning the opening inning into a track meet. Tyler Macon opened the night with a walk to extend his on-base streak to 14 games.
Jase Woita followed with another free pass, and a double steal immediately put the pressure on the Flames. Pierre Seals drove in a run in Macon on an RBI groundout, and Kaden Peer, who made his first start of the season after missing the first 12 games, punched in Woita on an RBI single to make it 2-0 in the opening inning.
Macon’s RBI double in the second extended his streak to 12 games, and after a wild pitch and aggressive baserunning, the Tigers were up 3-0 in the second frame.
UIC finally broke through with a run in the fourth, but Mizzou answered right back. Woita singled home Eric Maisonet to extend his own hit streak to nine games, and Seals reached on an error that allowed Macon to score again, stretching the lead to 5–1.
That cushion didn’t last long. Starter JD Dohrmann struggled with command all night — walking three, hitting two, and throwing just one first‑pitch strike to his first ten hitters — and UIC used four walks and two hits in the fifth to cut the lead to 5–4. Juan Villarreal and Ian Lohse also fought the zone, combining for five walks in one inning of work.
“We’re never playing another Thursday night game again,” head coach Kerrick Jackson joked. “Just uncharacteristic. JD was off. Juan’s a strike‑thrower and couldn’t fill it up. Ian’s been our guy all year and didn’t have it.”
Mizzou added a run in the sixth when Frost doubled to left, moved to third on a Macon sacrifice bunt, and scored on a wild pitch to make it 6–4.
UIC tied it again in the seventh with a two‑run double from Jake Busson off of Tigers right-handed reliever Eli Skidmore.
That set the stage for the biggest swings of the night.
With two outs in the bottom of the seventh, Chris Patterson worked a walk, and Maisonet jumped on a pitch and sent an opposite‑field, two‑run homer over the wall in left — his second of the season — to put Mizzou back in front. Two pitches later, Isaiah Frost unloaded a 396‑foot shot to right‑center for his first home run since 2024, giving the Tigers a 9–6 lead.
“The ones you hit hardest, you don’t really feel,” Frost said. “I knew I got it, but honestly, the double earlier hurt more on the hands. Just a lot of joy. Happy I could come through for my team.”
Frost finished 2‑for‑3 with a double, the homer, and two runs scored — another step in what has become a long‑awaited breakout season.
“I’ve poured my heart and soul into this school,” he said. “To finally help us win, it means a lot.”
UIC made one last push in the ninth, loading the bases and scoring twice to cut the lead to 9–8. Jackson turned to freshman Sam Rosand, who entered with one out and the tying run on second. Rosand got a pop‑up for the second out, then froze the final hitter with a strikeout to secure his first career save.
Jackson said wins like this — messy, tense, and earned — are the ones last year’s team didn’t always find.
“There’s a belief system now,” Jackson said. “As long as there are outs left, we think we can land the plane.”
GAME TWO
As gritty and hard fought as its win against UIC was on Thursday, the Flames brought enough of the fire to completely flip the first game’s result on its head.
Seven hits, four pitchers, and seven walks later, Missouri found themselves down 12-1 as the top half of the third inning had concluded. A nine-and-three run slot in the second and third innings left the Tigers’ offense shellshocked and ended the undefeated record for Mizzou at Taylor Stadium in the 2026 campaign, swiftly and devastatingly.
A new addition to the roster, Kam Durnin, connected on his first homer of the season in the top half of the first, the exact kickstart the doctor would have ordered after his 0-for-5 appearance at the dish Thursday.
It would have been hard to predict the devastating avalanche of offense that would come so soon after from UIC.
Tigers starter Javyn Pimental, who’d come into his outing with a 1.72 ERA and a 2-0 record, set down UIC 1-2-3 in his opening inning of work.
Two pitches into inning number two, Jake Busson brought the immediate answer to Durnin’s solo blast by replying with one of his own, 355 feet over the right field fence.
Then, the floodgates opened.
Missouri simply couldn’t stop the traffic on the bases—three straight free passes set up Gavin Acosta’s sacrifice fly, then Lucas Smith punched a run-scoring single up the middle. Kerrick Jackson tried to stop the bleeding with a pitching change, handing it over to the right-handed reliever PJ Green. The change didn’t douse the Flames’ offense.
Thomas Curry forced in another with a bases loaded walk, and Will Smoot followed by slicing a two‑run single through the left side.
Busson came back up and delivered what felt like, at the time, a knockout blow, launching his second homer of the inning—a 402‑foot three‑run shot to left—to cap a nine‑run avalanche, putting the flames up 9-1 before Mizzou finally recorded the last two outs of the third.
Then two things occurred. A timely lightning delay, followed by what looked to be an insurmountable comeback, that would have been unheard of with the 2025 group under Kerrick Jackson.
Missouri didn’t just rally — they climbed out of a canyon. Down 12–1 after UIC unloaded a three‑run spot in the top of the third, the game looked like a midweek blowout waiting to happen. Instead, Missouri spent the next five innings rewriting it, scoring 12 straight runs to steal a 13–12 win that felt impossible when the deficit first hit double digits.
The comeback started in the bottom of the fourth, and it started with a mistake. Eric Maisonet reached on a fielding error that brought home Kaden Peer, the first crack in UIC’s control of the game. Chris Patterson followed with an RBI single, then Tyler Macon added another run with a base hit to left. None of the swings were loud, but the inning was — three runs and suddenly the scoreboard didn’t look quite as lopsided at 12-4.
Then, in the middle of the fifth inning, right after a one-two-three retiring of the side by Mizzou reliever Keegan Kolhoff, a lightning delay began at 6:04 P.M. After a little over an hour had passed, the never-ending lightning strikes outside of Taylor Stadium forced a push back of the game to Saturday at 2 P.M, where the two teams picked up right where they would leave off.
Sometimes, weather delays can slow momentum. Not this time for the Missouri Tigers, not in the slightest.
Missouri kept pushing back in the fifth. Maisonet’s RBI groundout cut it to 12–5, and the Tigers finally found real momentum in the sixth. Macon drove in another run with a routine groundout, Jase Woita dropped a single into shallow left to score Isaiah Frost, and Cameron Benson delivered the biggest swing of the inning with a two‑run single to right. In the span of a few batters, the deficit shrank from seven to three.
By the seventh, Missouri had all the momentum. Woita ripped a two‑run double into right‑center, scoring Frost and Macon to tie the game at 12–12. A blowout had turned into a dead heat.
And in the eighth, Benson finished the job. With Peer on first, he turned on a 1–2 pitch and sent it over the wall in deep right — his first home run of the season, and the swing that completed the 12‑run comeback.
From the fourth inning through the eighth, Missouri outscored UIC 12–0. A game that looked over after three innings became one of the most dramatic turnarounds I’ve witnessed a Missouri team make at Taylor Stadium, built on pressure, patience, and a lineup that refused to let a 12–1 deficit define them.
