Momentum swung USM’s way, and LSU snatched it right back.
The Tigers followed Matthew Guidry’s seventh-inning, game-tying grand slam with a three spot in the eighth. The Golden Eagles had no answer and were put on the brink of elimination from the Baton Rouge Regional with an 8-4 loss Saturday night in front of 11,000-plus at Alex Box Stadium.
“We didn’t recover and didn’t do enough to keep the momentum on our side, and LSU didn’t let the momentum get away from them very long,” said Southern Miss coach Scott Berry.
“Tough baseball game tonight in a really good environment, but I felt like defense and pitching kept us in there for the first half of the game.”
Walker Powell drew the start on the mound for USM, and the junior right-hander managed to escape a handful of early jams by inducing ground balls. His defense turned three inning-ending double plays in the game’s first four innings. In the second, LSU took a 1-0 lead with a solo homer off the bat of Cade Beloso, but Powell answered with three straight scoreless innings to keep the Golden Eagles well within striking distance.
“[The homer] didn’t really affect me that much,” said Powell. “I knew I just had to get right back in there and keep attacking.”
The Southern Miss offense could not do the same in the game’s first six innings, leaving seven runners on base. Their best opportunity to score in that span came in the second inning when Matt Wallner and Bryant Bowen led off with back-to-back walks, but a pair of groundouts and a strikeout left them stranded and USM scoreless.
“Walker pitched a really nice game and gave our offense a chance,” said Berry. “But I think when you see three power arms like we saw tonight with [Cole] Henry, [Todd] Peterson and [Zach] Hess, it was like a new guy came in with recharged batteries, sitting there at 95 and 97. We had a difficult time catching up with it.”
Meanwhile, the Tigers extended their lead to 4-0 in the top of the sixth. After giving up a leadoff double and recording the inning’s first out, Powell was replaced on the mound by Sean Tweedy, who proceeded to give up a sac-fly from Beloso and a two-run homer from Zach Watson.
Todd Peterson then worked a scoreless bottom of the sixth out of the LSU bullpen, but the junior right-hander found himself in a bit of trouble in the seventh. After walking Danny Lynch and hitting Storme Cooper and Gabe Montenegro, the Golden Eagles had the bases loaded with nobody out. After that, Peterson’s day was done, and Zach Hess was called on to face Matthew Guidry. The former Oak Grove star followed up a swinging strike with a grand slam over the right field wall to tie the game at 4-4.
“The pitch before made me look pretty silly, and I got caught swinging through it,” said Guidry. “I just kinda saw it better out of the hand the second time and put a good swing on it.
“Nobody was trying to do too much, and we were trying to stay within ourselves. I just so happened to put a good enough swing on it to where it gave us a little spark.”
It wasn’t enough though, as the Tigers proved resilient in the eighth inning. They loaded the bases with nobody out, and back-to-back singles from Saul Garza and Chris Reid sent three runs home. LSU added another run in the ninth on the way to punching their ticket to the championship game of the Baton Rouge Regional with an 8-4 win.
The Tigers (39-24) will await the winner of the Southern Miss-Arizona State elimination game which is scheduled for 2 pm Sunday at Alex Box Stadium.
Southern Miss (39-20) will throw Stevie Powers against the Sun Devils, who they beat in Friday’s opening round, 15-3.
“Hopefully he [Powers] will go deep into the game so we don’t get in the pen too much,” said Berry. “But, at the end of the day too, if we don’t win, we go home, so we have to do whatever we can to win that and figure it out from there.”
