Southern Miss
New Orleans
Baseball Falls to UNO, 9-3
4/29/2008 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
April 29, 2008
HATTIESBURG, Miss. - UNO brought one of the NCAA's best offenses into Pete Taylor Park and defeated No. 28 Southern Miss 9-3 in front of 3,643 fans Tuesday evening snapping the Golden Eagles six game winning streak.
"We fell behind early and tried to fight back with a tired pitching staff against a good offense," head coach Corky Palmer said. "UNO came into this game feeling like they had to win against a good team on the road to help their post season chances so they threw their number one pitcher against our true freshman creating a little bit of a mismatch for us."
The Privateers came into the game sporting the nation's number four scoring offense, averaging 9.6 runs per game and the NCAA's sixth best batting average at .343 and it showed with 14 hits and nine runs tonight.
Southern Miss played their sixth game in the last eight days Tuesday night to start their third consecutive week with five games under the new condensed NCAA schedule. With that many games pitching is at a premium and the Golden Eagles top two arms have been unavailable for almost a month.
Southern Miss actually pitched infielder Josh Fields in the ninth inning tonight to rest the arms in the bullpen for the other four games this week.
One bright spot on the mound tonight for Southern Miss was Jonathan Johnson who faced eight hitters allowing only one hit while striking out three. He threw only 23 pitches to record the eight outs.
The Golden Eagles collected five hits in the game and all three runs came off the bat of James Ewing as he blasted his fourth home run of the season to tie the game temporarily in the third inning.
On the contrast UNO felt tonight's game was so important for them to win, they threw their normal Friday night starter, Justin Garcia, just four days removed from throwing seven innings last weekend.
UNO struck for the first run if the game in the top of the first inning as leadoff hitter Ryan Eden doubled to right-center field and came in to score on a RBI single by TJ Baxter.
The Privateers struck again in the second inning as, Jeff Lanning singled and stole second base before moving to third on infield ground out. Micheal Knipper singled down the left field line top pick up and RBI and force home Lanning for a 2-0 lead. Three batters latter Ryan Eden singled up the middle scoring Knipper for a quick 3-0 UNO advantage.
Southern Miss battled to tie the game in the bottom of the third inning as Bo Davis led off with a bunt single and Brian Dozier followed with a single up the middle. James Ewing blasted his second home run in as many games, off the scoreboard in left-center field to tie the game at three.
UNO answered right back with three runs of their own in the top of the fourth inning as Knipper added a two-RBI double and came around to score on a infield ground out to make the score 6-3.
The high powered Privateer offense was not done adding two more runs in the seventh on a two-run home run by TJ Baxter and a single run in the eighth on a RBI double by Josh Vander Hey.
Southern Miss hits the road for four games as they travel to Southeastern Louisiana tomorrow night and to Marshall this weekend.
-southernmiss.com-
