BILOXI – When Southern Miss was on offense, Gabe Shepard spent the half inning in the tunnel with water cooling off by a fan. While he was on the mound, he delivered the heat to the Rice batters.
In a 6-0 win, the freshman right-hander pitched 7.1 innings of no-hit ball to help Southern Miss reach its fourth straight Conference USA Tournament championship game. Cody Carroll finished the eighth inning and Hunter Stanley closed the door in the ninth to complete the first-ever no-hitter in Conference USA Tournament history.
“What a special, special game that everybody got to witness today,” Southern Miss coach Scott Berry said.
Southern Miss will play the winner of UTSA and Florida Atlantic at 1 p.m. on Sunday.
Shepard hit a lot of career highs Saturday. He threw 91 pitches while striking out 12 during his outing, then when he was pulled because of his pitch count, he received a standing ovation and had a curtain call from the packed MGM Park. Of course, he wasn’t ready to give up the ball when Southern Miss pitching coach Christian Ostrander came out to get him.
“I wanted to stay in there,” Shepard said. “But I just got back from surgery and it was best for me on a pitch count, so it was fine.”
Shepard is 13 months removed from his Tommy John surgery during his senior year of high school. He didn’t pitch much during the regular season, but he’s really come on strong the last two games he has started. Saturday was by far his best outing for his young collegiate career, and most likely his life.
“It was something different,” he said. “I’ve never experienced that. That was totally different than what I’ve experienced. I was in a totally different zone. The fans were behind me – the greatest fans. I just felt like I was on a different level than everybody else.”
Working from the stretch, his fastball sat in the low- to mid-90s with a curveball and a hard slider that kept the hitters thinking.
“That’s a live fastball that really jumps on you,” Berry said. “It gets on you quicker than it appears, but when you’re throwing 93, 96 miles per hour, I tell people all the time to drive down the interstate that fast and hang your head out the window. That’ll give you an idea.”
The build-up to the game felt like another normal day for the freshman, too. After the first batter, though, Shepard said he knew Saturday would be different.
“It was just one of those days,” he said. “It feels awesome. Feels like you can beat anybody.”
To the casual fan, Shepard seemingly came out of nowhere. Before Southern Miss beat Troy earlier this month, he only had 12.2 innings logged in 2019. He ended up striking out nine while giving up three hits in five innings of work against Troy, and he one-upped himself Saturday.
Of course to Berry and the Southern Miss coaches, they knew what they had all along. They just wanted to see consistency from Shepard.
“He’s been a process that we’ve been trying to groom,” Berry said. “He had some outings early where we were just going one, two, maybe three innings, but I think his breakthrough game was the last midweek game with Troy. He threw five dominant innings like we saw today.
“In my mind, today’s outing was going to determine that consistency if he could come back with it, and he didn’t disappoint.”
While Shepard was dealing, the Eagles’ offense used the long ball to create separation on the scoreboard. Bryant Bowen collected a pair of home runs, and Matt Wallner sent a homer 381 feet on the fly over the right-field wall late in the game.
Bowen got things started in the second inning with a solo shot. He belted the second pitch he saw over the left field wall to take a 1-0 lead. He added his second homer in the seventh inning, as Wallner and Bowen went back-to-back to extend the lead to 5-0.
Simply put, the baseball looked like a beach ball for the Golden Eagles.
“Today it did,” Bowen said. “I’m happy about it and I’m not going to complain.”
The Golden Eagles ended up plating three in the seventh to take a 6-0 lead, as Danny Lynch’s single to center scored Cole Donaldson, who doubled off the wall immediately after Bowen and Wallner’s back-to-back jacks.
Storme Cooper scored in the fourth when Matthew Guidry reached on an infield error to give Southern Miss a 2-0 lead, then Fred Franklin’s RBI single in the fifth made it 3-0.
