Nick Monistere stood confused and bewildered on second base.
The true freshman thought but was unsure he had just hit a grand slam over the left centerfield wall.
"I knew it felt good off the bat," Monistere said. "I thought it went over, but when I was running around first, I saw the outfielders playing like it was a double, so I stopped at second because I had no idea what was going on."
But the ball did, in fact, go over the wall but bounced off the scoreboard. It was a pivotal moment in Southern Miss' 10-5 win against Tulane because Monistere's grand slam helped the Golden Eagles overcome a 3-run deficit and extended their win streak to seven straight games.
The reason it took a few moments for all involved to realize the ball went over the fence was because after the ball bounced back on the field, Tulane's outfielders played the ball live and attempted to make a play at home. It even delayed Southern Miss' home run siren and light show, but as soon as Monistere saw the home run signal from the umpire, the infielder went crazy with emotion as he rounded the rest of the bases.
Before the big swing, Southern Miss coach Scott Berry thought a home run wouldn't happen during the game.
"Prior to that, I was like, it's going to take a ton to get a ball out of here," Berry said. "There's no wind. The air is a little moist and heavy. I didn't feel like it was hitter's night to get balls out there. He put a really good swing on it. I thought it was going to be gone."
Another reason for Berry's somewhat pessimistic thought was how frustrating the Golden Eagle lineup had performed through the first four innings as Southern Miss (29-15) trailed 4-1 and had stranded eight of their 13 runners left on base in that span. And so, by the bottom of the fourth, it prompted Berry to call his team together in the dugout.
"I challenged them," Berry said. "We have been playing too well, and we are not good enough to win six games and just show up and think that we are going to win. That's not the way anybody can do it. I didn't feel like we were competing at the plate like we needed to compete. It boiled down to just putting it into play."
The Golden Eagles then scored two runs off an infield RBI single by Blake Johnson and then an RBI walk by Matthew Etzel to narrow the score to 4-3. Then in the sixth inning, Monistere, who at that point was 0-for-2, broke the game open with his grand slam.
"(Monistere) had two really bad at-bats before that," Berry said. "He was very upset. He had a check swing in the first at-bat, and the next one was a half-swing ground ball. For him to be able to block that out and understand that the next at-bat is the most important, and it doesn't matter what you did prior to that, he showed us all that."
On the mound, starting pitcher Niko Mazza turned in a solid outing as he struck out six batters, allowed three earned runs off eight hits and walked one in 5.1 innings, while Kros Sivley and Justin Storm finished the game in relief with Tulane (13-32) scoring its final run in the ninth inning.
Southern Miss' offense added runs two more runs in the seventh and another in the eighth inning to pull away.
"We needed to start competing better," Monistere said. "We felt like that we were a better offense than what we were showing. We just had to get in and hit like we knew we could hit.
"You have to have short term memory. I just had to go into that at-bat and do a job and get a run-in. We are hot right now. We are swinging it really good, and our pitching is throwing it really good."
Southern Miss hosts South Alabama this weekend, with Friday's first pitch set for 6 p.m.
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