PRICE, UT—The Utah State University Eastern Baseball wrapped up their season with back to back losses at the Scenic West Athletic Conference tournament.
 
The Eagles were up 4-2 heading into fourth inning Wednesday against Salt Lake City Community College until the Bruins exploded for 8 more runs throughout the game to beat the Eagles 12-4.
 
Catcher Trevor Cling lead the Eagles with 3 RBI and first baseman Austin Pitch had 2 runs in the loss.
 
Later that afternoon the Eagles took on the College of Southern Idaho and loss 11-4 eliminating them from the tournament.
 
Against CSI, the Eagles were down 2-0 until the 7^th when CSI scored 5 runs and then in the 8^th both teams scored 4 runs a piece.
 
Injuries and lack of depth due to inexperience plagued the team throughout the season but made strides with the 16 freshman on the team.
 
The team was without their best hitter, first baseman Will Bierlien the last month of the season, before injury Bierlin held a .336 batting average.
 
Top pitcher Ben Bradford played with a torn meniscus throughout the season and also battled an elbow injury as well. Bradford finished the season 5-5 with a 6.24 ERA and struck out 49 batters at the plate.
 
"It was a trying season because of the youth of our team but at the same time they did really well and competed "says Madsen.
 
Finishing his 13^th year at the helm of Eagles baseball team, Coach Scott Madsen says the adversity and lessons learned from this season will help the program going forward.
              
"It was every win, every loss everybody was still on the same side, they understood our ultimate goal was go compete and do it in unity rather than one person trying to get better" says Madsen.
 
Winning as a team philosophy is what Coach Madsen says it the only way to win in the tough SWAC which features three of the top teams in the west in CSI, SLCC, and College of Southern Nevada.
 
 
Next season the Eagles will be without two of their impact players from this season due to graduation in shortstop Cory Mckendrick and centerfielder Austin Guertsen. Both players started and played in every game this past season for Madsen.
 
Madsen says his team will return a lot of great fielders for next season and wants to see the improvement of his team's hitting to continue as well.
"I think if we can get a couple of those guys to come in and be those swingers in those situations that we need a big hit. We need those guys to be able to jump in there and say 'hey look he's coming up were going to get that big hit', this year we didn't have that" says Madsen.
 
To help improve the pitching and hitting, the Eagles signed two players from the state of Utah who are pitchers that are both ranked in the top 10 in the state in home runs.
 
USU-Eastern also returns Austin Pitcher who led the Eagles batting .381 and had a slugging percentage of .500.
 
The team finished this season 16-42 overall including the two losses in the double elimination tournament in Henderson, NV.