April 2, 2015
By Matt Allibone, GoPSUsports.com Student Staff Writer
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - It's not everyday you see a ball clear the fence at Medlar Field.
Dating back to last year season, only one Nittany Lion had managed to pull the feat off. On Wednesday night against Kent State, however, that same player made hitting a home run there look as easy as poking a single.
In a game that the Lions would eventually drop, 9-7, junior slugger Greg Guers put on a show, knocking two pitches for home runs over the right field wall.
It was the second game in his Penn State career that Guers had homered at the team's home stadium. Still, the 6-foot-3 slugger kept things in perspective afterwards.
"It feels good but we lost so it doesn't feel that good," Guers said. "It's alright. I was just looking for pitches I can handle, luckily got two good swings off of them."
Guers may not have talked about himself much, but he really didn't need to. His teammates and head coaches were happy to take care of that for him.
While home runs may not be a typical part of the Nittany Lions' offensive arsenal (they entered Wednesday with four on the season), nobody in Penn State's dugout was surprised when either of Guers' shots cleared the fence. After all, the junior outfielder hit two home runs last year, including one at Medlar on May 16 against Michigan State.
"It's definitely exciting," senior third baseman Ryky Smith said. "A game like today, you're treading water, trying to stay into the game, and when somebody comes up with a huge hit like that it's definitely uplifting in the dugout.
"We all know he has the potential to do it. Tonight he was putting good swings on balls and it clicked for him. It's a ticking time bomb I think. You see the swing, you see it day in and day out on the batting cages so it's not all that much a surprise to me when he goes out and hits two home runs in a game."
Guers' first blast came in the bottom of the fifth inning, with Smith and Alex Malinsky on base and the Blue and White trailing the Flashes 4-1. With the Lions needing to stage a comeback, the right fielder ripped a curveball on a 1-2 pitch from Jared Skolnicki into the middle of the right field bleachers that tied the game and seemed to inject life into his teammates.
Later, with Kent State having taken a four-run lead into the bottom of the ninth, the Langhorne, Pennsylvania, native once again boosted Penn State's morale, taking Josh Pierce deep on the first pitch to the same spot in right field to cut the Flashes' lead to two.
Ultimately, the Lions would come up short. But the game was still marked continued progress for the junior, who raised his average from .242 to .253 with those two hits and is now tied for second on the team in RBIs with 16.
More importantly, it continued Guers' recent stretch of clutch play. A week ago against Villanova, he hit a bases-clearing double in the bottom of the eighth that led to a 5-2 win.
"The guy's been having unbelievable at-bats," head coach Rob Cooper said. "He's been having grinding, competitive at-bats, hitting balls hard at people. And it was nice to see him get rewarded for those approaches. The ball he hit, hanging breaking ball, to tie the game up was an absolute bomb. He's come a long way. Just the threat of him being able to do that, if you give him pitches to hit, that's all we need."
Although it was not the desired outcome, the Nittany Lions still finish their recent eight game homestand with a 6-2 record. With an important series coming up this weekend on the road against Ohio State, Penn State will look to get back to the fundamentals that helped them succeed at home.
"We've got to have a great practice tomorrow but we would have had to have had a great practice regardless," Cooper said. "We've got to make sue we address why this game came out the way it did."