The Alabama State baseball team lost to Eastern Kentucky 8-2 Friday night at the Wheeler-Watkins Baseball Complex in the season opener for both teams.

After scoring a run in the first inning, the Colonels (1-0) broke the game open with a three-run fourth inning.

Alabama State (0-1) stranded multiple runners on base in the third, fifth, and seventh innings, including leaving the bases loaded in the third.

"We had a lot of opportunities to score runs," Alabama State head coach Mervyl Melendez said. "We put runners on base. We didn't swing the bat extremely well, but we didn't strikeout a whole lot either. We mis-hit a lot of pitches, a lot of pitches that should have been hit harder and we didn't hit them as well. We left 12 runners on base and that really tells the whole story of the game."

Eastern Kentucky scored a pair of runs in the eighth and ninth innings. The Hornets got on the board in the eighth, when Waldyvan Estrada scored from second base on an error. Alabama State scored its final run in the ninth when Richard Amion scored on an error.

The teams play game two of the three-game series Saturday at 6 p.m., with Sunday's game at 1 p.m.

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