Championship Central
The First, A National Banking Association, 2017 Conference USA Championship continues Friday with two games on the schedule. Both matchups are teams that faced each other in the weekend of the regular season. Florida Atlantic, which took two-of-three from Old Dominion in Boca Raton, matches up with The Monarchs in an elimination game at 3 pm CT. UTSA and Southern Miss will meet for the fifth time in six games at 6:30 pm CT. Charlotte and Rice have advanced to the winners bracket and have today off. Both of Friday's games are on ESPN3 and live stats through StatBroadcast are available on the C-USA Baseball Championship Central page.
FLORIDA ATLANTIC 6, OLD DOMINION 2
BILOXI, Miss. _ For the past two weekends, Florida Atlantic left-hander Jake Miednik proved to be kryptonite to the Old Dominion batting order.
After shutting out the Owls for eight innings in the regular-season finale, Miednik tossed 7 1/3 innings of one-hit, shutout baseball Friday afternoon as third-seeded FAU stayed alive in The First, A National Banking Association, Conference USA Championship with a 6-2 victory over the second-seeded Monarchs.
“That’s two weeks in a row he’s thrown really good,” ODU coach Chris Finwood said. “We just couldn’t figure Miednik out. He threw more fastballs (Friday), and the wind was blowing in (at MGM Park), so it was going to be a tougher day.”
Tougher than tough.
After ODU right fielder Kyle Battle shot a single up the middle on the third pitch of the game, Miednik retired the next 18 Monarchs. No hits. No walks. No hit batsmen. Nothing, until first baseman Vinnie Pasquantino led off the seventh inning with a clean single to right field.
“In a tournament like this, you need that kind of outing,” FAU coach Jon McCormack said. “At this point, it’s all hands on deck. For him to give us 7.1 innings, it was fantastic.
“We got enough hits and we did what we were supposed to do.”
The win sends FAU (35-20-1) into Saturday’s 9 a.m. semifinal against sixth-seeded Rice (29-29). FAU would have to beat Rice twice to advance to Sunday’s 1 p.m. championship game.
“In this thing, you have to keep loose and let them enjoy themselves,” McCormack said. “They might be a little goofy, but they are smart enough to know it is: win or go home. It’s win or get on the bus.
“We might as well keep winning because if we win this thing maybe I can talk our AD into flying us home.”
After opening the tournament with a victory, the Monarchs (37-21) saw their tournament come to an end after back-to-back losses Thursday and Friday.
“We didn’t play real well (Friday), but we’ve played well all year,” Finwood said.
FAU took a 2-0 off ODU starter Michael Blanchard (1-3) in the third inning on run-scoring singles by second baseman Steven Kerr and right fielder David Miranda.
Kerr drove in another run in the fifth inning for a 3-0 lead, and FAU tacked on two more in sixth inning on a wild pitch and a hit batsman with the bases loaded.
Miednik worked through a two-on, no outs, situation in the seventh inning, but got in trouble again in the eighth inning.
Left fielder Turner Bishop doubled and catcher Devon Adams walked, then each moved up a base nubber in front of the plate. Battle hit a sinking liner into left field for a single that scored Bishop and finished MIednik’s day, and Adams scored when FAU left fielder Eric Rivera bobbled and then dropped Pasquantino’s fly ball.
But Weston Clemente struck out ODU three-hole hitter Jared Young for the second out before giving way to Drew Peden, who before throwing his first pitch, whirled and picked Battle off second base to end the inning.
Miednik finished by allowing two runs on four hits, walking on and striking out five.
Peden struck out two batters in a 1-2-3 ninth inning to earn his second save on the season.
SOUTHERN MISS 7, UTSA 1
With its collective back against the wall and facing the team that put it there, the 11th-ranked Southern Miss handed the baseball to junior Taylor Braley Friday night.
That turned out to be a very good call indeed.
With the packed-in-black-and-gold stands in full roar, Braley threw eight shutout innings to help USM stay alive in The First, A National Banking Association, Conference USA Baseball Championship with a 7-1 victory over UTSA before 4,276 at MGM Park.
“No better guy to hand that ball to, especially in that situation,” Southern Miss coach Scott Berry said. “Just outstanding. He couldn’t have been any better and our team played terrific all the way around.
“We did a lot of things well and deserved to have that win.”
Top-seeded USM (46-13) will face fourth-seeded Charlotte (34-22) in a 12:30 p.m. Saturday semifinal. It will be the first meeting between the teams this season.
Charlotte won its first two games, so the 49ers did not play Friday and advanced straight to Saturday’s semifinals. The Golden Eagles will have to defeat the 49ers twice on Saturday to advance to Sunday’s 1 p.m. championship game and defend their 2016 tourney crown.
“Obviously, we have to win the first one,” Braley said. “We can’t count on it. We have to win that first one, then we’ll worry about the second.”
Braley (6-2) scattered seven singles over eight innings, walking none while striking out nine as the Golden Eagles avenged Wednesday’s 9-2 opening-round loss to the eighth-seeded Roadrunners (29-28) that sent Southern Miss into the elimination bracket.
The Golden Eagles bounced back with a 5-2 win that eliminated fifth-seeded Louisiana Tech Thursday, then eliminated UTSA Friday.
After Wednesday’s opening-round win, the Roadrunners ran into two, top-shelf pitching performances, with Charlotte’s Colton Laws and Braley holding the UTSA to one run in 18 innings.
“We faced Charlotte Thursday night and Laws was outstanding, and I told the guys, it’s hard when you’re competing to give credit to your opponent,” UTSA coach Jason Marshall said. “But when it’s all said and done, Braley threw lights out.
“He’s got great stuff, and his slider, it got rolling there in the middle of the game. It was an unhittable pitch for us.”
Southern Miss banged out 12 hits against the Roadrunners, with right fielder Mason Irby going 3 for 4 with an RBI. Third baseman Tracy Hadley, First baseman Dylan Burdeaux and catcher Bryant Bowden each collected two hits.
Burdeaux reached 100 hits with a single and double in his first two at-bats. He became the first C-USA player to reach hits in a season since East Carolina’s Trent Whitehead finished with 105 hits in 2009.
The Golden Eagles grabbed a 1-0 lead in the first inning off UTSA starter Nolan Trabanino (6-7) when Burdeaux scored on left fielder Matt Wallner fielder’s choice grounder
Burdeaux made it 2-0 in the second inning when he doubled with two outs to score shortstop LeeMarcus Boyd from first base.
Bowden led off the fourth inning with his fifth home run of the season, a blast to left field that cleared the netting and an oak tree directly behind the fence. Three of Bowden’s home runs came against the Roadrunners in the past eight days.
The Golden Eagles added two more runs in the inning, one on Irby’s single, the other on Braley’s sacrifice fly, for a 5-0 lead.
Southern Miss made it 7-0 in the fifth inning on run-scoring singles by Boyd and second baseman Matthew Guidry.
Braley held UTSA to four singles through the first seven innings, with no Roadrunner reaching second base.
UTSA led off the eighth inning with three, consecutive singles to load the bases.
But Braley bowed up, striking out pinch hitter J.T. Gilmore and center fielder Kevin Markham and then getting a chopper to shortstop that Boyd flipped to Hadley at third base for the force.
Alex Nelms pitched the ninth inning, allowing a run on two hits, including C.J. Pickering’s single.