BATON ROUGE – Southern Miss senior Storme Cooper picked the perfect time to have his best game of the season.
His bat helped sparked the Golden Eagles offense in the fifth inning, as they raced past Arizona State 15-3 on opening day of the Baton Rouge Regional. Southern Miss will now play the winner of LSU and Stony Brook at 6 p.m. Saturday.
“I felt like we were playing with a lot of emotion, and it got the guys fired up,” Cooper said of his performance in the fifth inning.
Cooper entered the game with only seven hits this season, but he put together a 3-for-5 performance with three RBI. His best swing of the day came when Southern Miss was trialing 1-0 in the fifth. He sent a full count pitch over the left field wall to tie the contest, and that kick started the Golden Eagles’ offense that finished with 17 hits.
It was Cooper’s first home run in 96 at-bats, which dates back to April 26, 2017.
“Old Dominion at home. Yep, I do remember that,” Cooper said of his last home run. “A long time ago.”
Southern Miss used RBI from Matt Wallner, Fred Franklin and Danny Lynch, and a couple of wild pitches to take a 5-1 lead in the same inning as Cooper’s leadoff homer. Then after everybody else in the lineup batted, Cooper came up again and sent a chopper to the shortstop with two outs. He beat the throw to allow Franklin to come home from third, and Lynch came all the way around from second to score as the Arizona State first baseman pleaded with the umpire for the out call.
Still batting with a 7-1 lead, Hunter Slater picked up two more RBI, then Wallner brought the strong showing of Southern Miss fans at Alex Box Stadium to their feet with a blast off LSU’s national champions billboard, The Intimidator, beyond the bleachers in right field.
“When Storme hit one out, I figured I’d try to go over The Intimidator,” Wallner said. “I hit it, so I tried my best. I don’t think I can do it.”
The Golden Eagles finished the fifth with 10 two-out runs, and when it was all said and done, they led 12-1.
“It helps when you get in rhythm as an offense,” Wallner said. “That’s where we were that inning, so it made it pretty easy just to go up there and have a solid approach.”
While the Eagles’ bats started to heat up, freshman Gabe Shepard put together another solid start on the mound. While it wasn’t as dominating as his 7.1 innings of no-hit ball in the Conference USA Tournament last week, it was exactly what Southern Miss needed Friday.
He worked 5.2 innings and gave up six hits and two earned runs with three walks and four strikeouts.
“I’m very proud of his outing today,” Southern Miss coach Scott Berry said. “That’s three in a row where he’s shown up and had consistent stuff to allow his team to win. Our team really feels good when he’s out there.”
Shepard came out of the gates throwing 97 on the radar gun, and he was even touching 94 when he eclipsed more than 100 pitches in the sixth inning. He looked sharp through the first couple of innings, but Arizona State did get a base runner in every inning Shepard pitched.
Shepard walked the first batter of the game on four pitches, and he even admitted that happens in most of his starts. He said he had to mess with the mound a little bit, and he regroup immediately.
“I felt pretty strong,” Shepard said. “I had a lot of emotions running (at the beginning of the game). Later in the game I got tired, but I felt good (early).”
It’s worth noting, Shepard had a 40-plus-minute break while the Southern Miss offense was scoring those 12 runs in the fifth.
Arizona State’s Lyle Linn broke the scoreless game with a sacrifice fly in the bottom of the fourth. When Sun Devils jumped up 1-0, Southern Miss 22 scoreless inning streak came to an end.
Spencer Torkelson made it a 12-2 game in the sixth with his 22nd home run of the season, then Sean Tweedy left the bases loaded after entering the game for Shepard with two outs.
“(Shepard) was making good pitches, he was hitting his spots and he had good life on his fastball,” Torkelson said. “We had a good approach going into the game, and he pitched well.”
Lynch made it a 15-2 game with a long homer in the eighth. While he didn’t hit The Intimidator, he put 1-0 pitch in the final row of the right field bleachers.
The Sun Devils added their final run in the ninth.
Berry didn’t announce a starting pitcher for Saturday.
Southern Miss has now won the first game of a Regional for the fourth straight season.
