Everything seemed to be going right for Southern Miss as they made their way into the Regional Final game on Sunday night without a loss, but LSU had different plans to put together a stunning rally to defeat Southern Miss 7-6 in 10 innings.
Southern Miss led 6-2 going into the final frame and LSU scored four runs in the bottom of the ninth, including three of those runs coming with two outs.
“It was a great night for college baseball, a great night for our team and a great night for our program. I’m proud of the players again. We said it yesterday and we have this saying that there’s no clock in baseball. No team has probably exhibited that better than our team here in the last two days,” LSU head coach Jay Johnson said in the postgame press conference.
LSU had come back from seven down in the eighth inning to beat Kennesaw State in the first round. Then in last night’s game, they rallied from four down, shocking Southern Miss.
“We’re very disappointed in the outcome of it. We just couldn’t put them away in the ninth inning. We played a really good game up until that point,” Southern Miss head Coach Scott Berry said.
LSU had come into the matchup boasting one of the best hitting teams in America. Southern Miss decided, with some controversy, to go with right-hander Hurston Waldrep to start the game. Waldrep pitched an incredible game and put the controversy to rest.
His final line was 6.2 IP, 5 H, 2 ER, 2 BB, 11 K and 119 total pitches. Johnson said Waldrep was “easily” one of the two best pitchers LSU had seen all season. He struck out six in a row at one point and tied the school’s NCAA record for most strikeouts in a game.
“I thought that Hurston continued to get so much better after the third inning. I think he sat down 11 batters before we had to pull him after he gave up the double in the seventh. Outstanding outing by him, he just continued to get stronger and stronger,” Berry said. “Obviously, what he was able to do during the course of his outing was to get punch outs and strike outs. We weren’t able to do that later in the game and they were able to foul pitches off to extend at bats. Credit to LSU for that.”
Waldrep was a little antsy to start, however, as his 31 pitch in the first inning did come back to bite him later as he might have stayed on for another inning if it wasn’t for that. LSU got a run across in the bottom of the first inning with a single by Tre’s Morgan to make the score 1-0 in favor of the Tigers.
Christopher Sargent would lead off the second with a single and he would be driven home with a two-run blast by Will McGillis, which was his 16th on the season.
The Tigers would respond instantly with a lead-off home run by Tyler McManus to tie the game up at two apiece. Sargent would reach base again in the fourth inning, and he would score thanks to a single by Danny Lynch to give Southern Miss the lead back.
They would then get three home runs by Carson Paetow and Sargent. Rodrigo Montenegro would come up with the RBI-fielder’s choice.
That would make the score 6-2.
After that, everything changed when Hurston Waldrep went off the mound in the bottom of the seventh inning.
“I’m glad we got him out of the game at 119 pitches and these guys two my left and my right just took big time professional at bats to have a great night,” Johnson said.
LSU was down four runs in the bottom of the ninth and hadn’t scored since the second inning.
Dylan Crews hits a one-out solo shot to left field. Then after a single, Cade Doughty came up with a two-run home run to the right-field wall. Following Doughty, Jordan Thompson would come up with the game-tying RBI single.
Southern Miss would get out of the inning and have a chance to take the lead, coming up empty. LSU scored the game-winning run on an RBI-Fielder’s choice by Josh Pearson.
It was an absolute deflating loss for Southern Miss. However, they aren’t out of the competition yet.
They will face Kennesaw St in an elimination game; the winner will have to beat LSU twice to win the Regional.
