SAUGET, Ill.--The Bellarmine University baseball team banged out 21 hits and blew past the St. Joseph's Pumas 17-6 this evening in the Great Lakes Valley Conference Championship Tournament semifinals at GCS Ballpark. 

The victory advances the Knights to the GLVC Championship Game tomorrow at 1 p.m. (noon CDT) at GCS Ballpark, where they will face Southern Indiana, who also had a blowout win today--16-2 over Indianapolis.

Bellarmine had no shortage of outstanding performances, including a solid starting pitching performance by freshman Phil Forbis, who went seven full innings and yielded just two earned runs while striking out five.  Offensively, Bellarmine was led by Chris Wiedmar, who went 4-for-5, while Sam Burke and Patrick Brady each collected three hits.  

Brady, who became the Knights' all-time leader in homers and RBI in yesterday's game, added to his record-breaking totals with another homer and four more RBIs today as he lacked just a double to hit for the cycle.

Bellarmine's Todd Duckworth opened the game with a bang, hitting a leadoff home run to stake the Knights to an early 1-0 lead. In the top of the second, Bellarmine extended the lead to 7-0 by collecting five hits and taking advantage of two St. Joseph's errors.

Meanwhile, Forbis kept St. Joseph's off the scoreboard until fourth inning when the Pumas took advantage of a Bellarmine error and scored two unearned runs.  St. Joseph's--the home team on the scoreboard--got as close as they would come in the bottom of the fifth when they scored two more runs to cut the Bellarmine lead to 8-4.

The Knights responded with a 6-run sixth to blow the game open.  

Bellarmine improves to 34-23 on the season and have now won 20 of their past 24 games.  The Pumas fall to 31-22.

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