O'FALLON, Mo. – The potent Missouri Baptist Spartans offense picked up where they left off from the regular season in a resounding 22-3 win over Lyon College in their first game in the 2023 American Midwest Conference Baseball Championship Tournament in O'Fallon, Mo.

After being bottled up for the first two innings by the Scots starting pitcher Ian Jackson, the MBU offense broke out, in a big way. They put four runs on the board in the third, seven in the fourth, and 11 more in the fifth to turn a scoreless game into a lopsided win. The win moves the top-seeded one step closer to their seventh AMC conference tournament title.

Meanwhile, on the mound, Spartans starter Tanner Young turned in one of his best performances of the season to hold Lyon to zero runs on two hits in his six innings of work. He struck out five and walked just one to gain his seventh win of the season to go with just two losses. The most trouble the native of Vinton, La. ran into was the result of hitting four Scots batters.

In securing 17 hits, the Spartans batted around in an inning twice, once in the third inning and again in the fifth. All nine Spartans in the starting lineup had at least one hit and seven of them had two hits, with every starter also reaching base at least twice.

Blane Besse hit his team-leading 15^th home run in the fifth inning. The AMC Player of the Year finished the game one for three with 2 runs batted in.  First baseman Cole Robinson drove in four runs, and he leads the Spartans in that category with 72.

Senior Chris Brown came in to pitch the top of the seventh and surrendered the only runs to the Scots.

The Spartans will take on the second-seeded Columbia Cougars at 10:00 a.m. on Thursday in a battle of the two remaining unbeaten teams in the tournament. Columbia beat Central Baptist 8-2 Wednesday afternoon.