Jagun Leavitt executed a perfect suicide squeeze in the bottom of the 10^th inning to lift Dixie State to a dramatic 9-8 victory over in-state rival Utah Valley in the opening game of a four-game WAC baseball series on Friday night at Bruce Hurst Field. The win snapped the Trailblazers' six-game losing skid as DSU improved to 12-26 overall, 10-11 in WAC play.

After taking a quick 1-0 lead on a Cade Spurlin run-scoring single in the home first, Dixie State saw the Wolverines (7-32/5-20 WAC) plate three runs in their next at-bat to vault to a two-run advantage.

However that would be it for UVU as the bullpen duo of Ben Hart and Jack Gonzales combined to blank Wolverines on just three hits over the next six innings. Hart fanned three and scattered three hits over four innings of work, while Gonzales punched out three of the seven UVU hitters he faced over the next two frames.

Meanwhile, the Blazer offense kicked it into gear, scoring seven unanswered runs from the fifth inning on to erase the deficit and take an 8-3 lead heading into the ninth. Dixie State tallied three runs of its own in the fifth, which started with a towering Mathew Ivancich (1) solo home run to straight-away center field to lead off the frame.

Shane Taylor followed with a ringing double off the right field wall to drive home Leavitt, who singled two pitches after the Ivancich long ball, while Jake Engel capped the inning with a bad-hop single down the third base line to plate Taylor.

Spurlin (5) matched Ivancich's homer with a lead-off shot of his own to start the home sixth, while Engel legged out a two-out triple and scored on a Lane Pritchard single in the seventh. DSU then tacked on two more insurance runs with two outs in the eighth on a Ben Petty-Hull two-run single.

Those two DSU insurance runs proved to be huge as UVU mounted a furious rally in the ninth The Wolverines struck for five runs on three hits, one walk and one hit batter, culminating with an Alexander Marco two-run blast over the wall in center that knotted the score at 8-8.

With one out and a runner on third in the UVU 10^th, Andrew Hacker hit a bounding ball to Taylor at third base, who fired a strike to Kaden Hollow to cut down the potential go-ahead at the plate to preserve the tie.

Dixie State would then load the bases with one out in the home 10^th for Leavitt, who squared a Carson Brown pitch back to the mound just ahead of a hard-charging Tyson Fisher, who stepped on home plate carrying the winning run as Brown fielded the ball to end the game. 

The quartet of Taylor, Engel, Spurlin and Leavitt each tallied two hits as Dixie State outhit UVU by a 12-9 count. Zach Thomas (W, 2-1) worked around the tie-break baserunner and one Wolverine hit in the 10^th to pick up his second win of the year.  

The two teams will play the middle pair of their four-game weekend series on Saturday afternoon beginning at 2:05 p.m.