Southern Miss continued to click on all cylinders as the Golden Eagles not only picked up their eighth straight win after defeating South Alabama 6-4 but also became tied for first place in the Sun Belt standings after Coastal Carolina suffered a loss to Appalachian State.
“We can’t get caught up with what everyone else is doing,” Southern Miss coach Scott Berry said. “We have to strive to play the best baseball we can.”
Southern Miss’ bats stayed efficient, with USM going 3-for-5 with runners on third and less than two outs. On the mound, starting pitcher Tanner Hall turned in another memorable performance as he retired 14 straight batters to conclude his outing.
However, South Alabama (23-22, 11-11 Sun Belt) jumped out to a 2-0 lead over the Golden Eagles by the top of the second inning. Hall gave up a single and double in the first inning, which led to an RBI sac fly to put the Jaguars on the board. Then in the second inning, South Alabama’s Austin Thrasher hit a 2-out solo home run.
“They came out swinging early,” said Hall, who improved to 9-3. “I felt like I had to step up and rise to the occasion a little bit. In the beginning, we weren’t quite getting the runs in like we needed to, but once we all got rolling, I had to keep putting up shutdown innings. Once we started hitting it, it made it really easy to keep rolling with that momentum.”
But Southern Miss (30-15, 15-7) got the runs back as Reece Ewing came up with an RBI single in the second, and later Paetow came up with an RBI sac fly in the fourth. Hall’s only other blemishes were walks in the third and fourth innings. In eight innings of work, Hall allowed two runs off three hits, struck out nine, walked two and threw 110 pitches.
“I started to notice that once I got ahead on those guys, they started taking the changeup,” Hall said. “I think they were all sitting on the changeup when I was leaving it down. I started throwing a get me over changeup in the strike zone to get that call. Once we did that, when I was ahead in the count, we switched over to throwing some fastballs and messing with their timing. After that, I felt like they were off balance.”
Southern Miss then scored a pair of runs in back-to-back innings in the sixth and seventh. Danny Lynch hit a solo home run, with Rodrigo Montenegro driving in a run with an infield RBI single to push the Golden Eagles’ lead to 4-2.
“We’ve done a great job over this win streak of keeping the vibe up all the time,” Lynch said. “Being positive and having good energy all the time.
“We knew we were chasing (Coastal Carolina) down, but it’s one game at a time. It’s one pitch at a time and one inning at a time. We went down 2-0 tonight, and there was no panic. We are a confident bunch because, at some point, we knew we were going to start getting to them.”
In the seventh, Slade Wilks hit an RBI triple, with Nick Monistere later coming up with an RBI sac fly.
South Alabama did find life in the top of the ninth inning after reliever Kros Sivley loaded the bases with two outs. Justin Storm gave up a late 2-run RBI single but recorded a strikeout to finish the game.
“I’m proud of our guys for being able to come back,” Berry said. “Offensively, in four of the eight innings, were able to score in situational at-bats.
“Sometimes the game is won in different ways. Sometimes it’s won in the first inning, and sometimes it’s won in the ninth. Today it was a good balance.”
Southern Miss’ Saturday game against South Alabama is set for 12 p.m.
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