May 27, 2016
LA Tech-FAU Quotes 
LA Tech-FAU Box Score
VIDEO RECAP
HATTIESBURG, Miss. - Louisiana Tech center fielder Cody Daigle came to the plate with one out in the bottom of the 10th inning still thinking about a throwing error that had helped Florida Atlantic tie the game a few innings earlier.
A few moments later, Daigle said he was not thinking about anything until he rounded third base and saw his red-jerseyed teammates massed to mob him at home plate.
Daigle crushed a 2-1 offering from Owl reliever Colyn O'Connell deep over the left-field fence at Taylor Park to give fifth-seeded LA Tech a 5-4, walk-off win over top-seeded Florida Atlantic in a Friday afternoon elimination game in the 2016 Conference USA Baseball Championship.
"I really wanted to do something to help our team get back up," said Daigle, who drove in four of the Bulldogs' five runs. "It was crazy. I'd never hit a walk-off this was my first walk-off so to do it at the Conference USA tournament, it's just crazy."
Daigle's dramatics sent the Bulldogs (39-17) into a Saturday semifinal showdown with fourth-seeded Rice (34-20), a rematch of Wednesday's tournament opening game won by the Texan version of the Owls, 13-12.
LA Tech will have to beat Rice twice Saturday to advance from that side of the tournament bracket into Sunday's 1 p.m. championship game. The teams meet at 9 a.m., with a second game, if necessary, scheduled for 4 p.m.
"I don't even want to think about that right now," LA Tech coach Greg Goff said. "We're going to enjoy this one for just a little bit right now."
Florida Atlantic's loss meant that the conference's regular-season champion had been eliminated before the postseason tournament semifinals for a second consecutive year.
"This hurts, but we have more baseball ahead of us," Florida Atlantic coach John McCormack said in expectation of a berth in next week's NCAA Regional. "It was a great baseball game.
"This is what makes tournaments like this so great, games like this. Get down early. You rally back.
"Two teams battle back and forth and then a guy hits a walk-off. (For us), it happened to be the wrong guy, but congratulations to them. That is what these tournaments are about."
LA Tech took an early 2-0 lead, saw the Owls tie the game at 2-2, pushed out to at 4-2 lead before Florida Atlantic (38-17) tied the game in the top of the eighth inning, 4-4. Owl starter David McKay ran into trouble with two outs in the first.
McKay issued consecutive walks to designated hitter Jonathan Washam, third baseman Chase Lunceford and let fielder Raphael Gladu to load the bases and Daigle followed with a single to right field for 2-0 lead.
Florida Atlantic got a run back in the second inning on right fielder Brett Lashley's run-scoring single before catcher Gunnar Lambert's single tied the game in the fourth inning.
The Bulldogs went back ahead in the bottom on the fourth when Gladu tripled and scored on Daigle's grounder, then went back up by two runs on second baseman Jordan Washam run-scoring single in the seventh.
But Florida Atlantic scored twice in the eighth to make it 4-4. Catcher Tyler Frank's single to center brought in one run, and a pair of throwing errors on the play not only allowed the tying run to score, but left runners on second and third with one out.
But LA Tech reliever Adam Atkins struck out Lashley and Stephen Kerr to mitigate the damage and make Daigle's dramatics possible a few innings later.
"I was pretty mad because we kicked the ball around," Goff said of his team's five errors. "It's really uncharacteristic of our guys."
Atkins (6-0) allowed just one unearned run on two hits in three innings, striking out five while walking one.
O'Connell (2-1) had just entered the game in 10th inning as the Owls' fourth pitcher of the game.