Championship Central
Top-seeded Southern Miss faces No. 6 seed Rice in The First, A National Banking Association, 2017 Conference USA Championship Title Game, marking the fifth time in nine years this ornithological matchup has taken place in the final game. No other matchup has happened more than twice in league history. Each school has won twice in these head-to-head matchups. Southern Miss won last year’s championship title game showdown, 3-2. The game will be televised by CBS Sports Network at 1 pm CT. Live stats through StatBroadcast are available on the C-USA Baseball Championship Central page.
SATURDAY'S GAMES:
RICE 13, FLORIDA ATLANTIC 2
BILOXI, Miss. _ Spring follows winter. Night turns into day. Rice University appears in another conference baseball tournament championship game.
Willy Amador scattered six hits over six innings and Rice got early, two-run home runs from third baseman Dane Myers and second base Tristan Gray on its way to a 13-2 victory in seven innings Saturday morning over Florida Atlantic in The First, A National Banking Association, Conference USA Championship.
The victory was Rice’s third in a row at MGM Park this week and sent the Texan Owls into their ninth C-USA title game in 12 years. The 2017 championship game is set for 1 p.m. Sunday.
“We need to win (Sunday) worse than any other,” Rice coach Wayne Graham. “We’ve had a lot of adversity.”
Indeed. Rice came into the 2017 tournament as the sixth seed, two games under .500. That’s neither a slot nor a record that Rice’s proud baseball program is accustomed.
But Rice (30-29) has kicked its game into gear over the past five weeks. Since dropping two of three games in a weekend conference series to the Southern Miss at Reckling Park, Rice has won 17 of 21 games since April 17, including its run through the tournament this week.
“The way our season started, we all knew we were a lot better than how that started off,” said Myers, who drove in four runs and scored three times on three hits Saturday. “But we trust in our game, and seeing us play like this is really nice.”
While Amador (4-5) was holding third-seeded FAU (35-21-1) in check, Rice was pounding out 13 hits against six pitchers.
“We ran into a buzzsaw,” FAU coach Jack McCormack said. “Rice has been playing really well down the stretch.
“We didn’t pitch great, but I don’t think we pitched terrible...They’re just on a roll, and you see that in these tournaments. We all knew going into the year that they were going to be good, and that (their) first 40 games were an anomaly.”
Cameron Ragsdale (2-3), FAU’s erstwhile closer, made the first start of his career, and failed to make it through three innings.
In the first inning, shortstop Ford Proctor doubled and Myers followed with his sixth home run of the season for a 2-0 lead.
In the third inning with two outs, Ragsdale hit catcher Dominic DiCaprio with a pitch and then served up Gray’s sixth home run of the season for a 4-0 Rice lead.
Rice sent 11 men to the plate in a six-run fourth inning, then tacked on three more runs in the fifth inning.
FAU’s only runs came off the bat of second baseman Stephen Kerr, who led off the fourth and sixth innings with solo home runs.
SOUTHERN MISS 6, CHARLOTTE 5
For the better part of seven innings, the Charlotte seemed to have its baseball game with Southern Miss well in hand in the semifinals of The First, A National Banking Association, Conference USA Championship.
Hunter Slater, Tracy Hadley and Taylor Braley and the rest of the Golden Eagles had other ideas.
Southern Miss erased a 5-1 deficit over the last two innings, with Braley’s two-run, walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth inning giving the top-seeded Golden Eagles a 6-5 victory over the fourth-seeded 49ers at MGM Park Saturday afternoon.
“They’re a bunch of guys you just never doubt,” Southern Miss coach Scott Berry said. “We’ve seen it time and time again, and saw it again (Saturday).
The teams will face each other again at 7:30 p.m., with the winner going on to face Rice in the tournament championship game at 1 p.m. Sunday.
The Golden Eagles (47-13) had to win twice Saturday after losing in the opening round and having to come back through the elimination bracket.
Charlotte (34-23) was just three outs away from reaching its first C-USA title game since 1998 before the Golden Eagles pulled off their seventh walk-off win of the season.
“It’s two teams playing at a real high level and they were just a little bit better than we were,” Charlotte coach Loren Hibbs said.
Charlotte led from the first pitch on, when leadoff man Zach Jarrett took the first offering from Southern Miss left-hander over the left-field wall for a 1-0 lead.
The 49ers nicked Powers for two more runs in the second, the first on Harris Yett’s single and the other on a fielding/throwing error by Hadley.
Roberts entered in the third inning, and allowed 2 runs on three hits over the next 5 2/3 innings, including a run in the fifth on Brett Zetzer’s sacrifice fly to put the 49ers ahead 4-0.
The Golden Eagles got one back in fifth when Mason Irby scored on Matt Wallner’s run-scoring double, but Charlotte got that run back in the top of the eighth inning on Reece Hampton’s bloop double into shallow center field off reliever Nick Sandlin.
The 49ers were up 5-1 and six outs away from Sunday.
“It wasn’t pretty for seven innings, other than Hayden Roberts going out there and keeping Charlotte down and giving this offense a chance because we feel like if there’re still outs on the board, we can score runs, and that’s what they did,” Berry said.
Indeed.
Braley walked and Wallner was hit by a pitch to lead off the eighth inning, bringing in reliever Josh Maciejewski from the bullpen.
Slater greeted him with a two-run triple ripped just inside the first-base bag and into the right-field corner, scoring Braley and Wallner and getting the Golden Eagles to 5-3. Hadley then lined a single into left field to pull Southern Miss within 5-4.
Bryant Bowen followed with an infield single, and USM had runners on first and second with no outs.
But Matthew Guidry popped out on a bunt attempt and the inning ended on two, long fly balls.
Sandlin (9-1) held down the top of the ninth, setting up the dramatics in the bottom of the inning when Braley connected off Maciejewski (5-5) for his 16th home run of the season following a leadoff single by Irby.
The ball disappeared into the trees just beyond the left-field netting, and a few moments later, Braley disappeared into the mob awaiting him at home plate.
“Honestly, I had a feeling he was going to leave the yard,” Berry said. “He’s just that kind of player.”
SOUTHERN MISS 10, CHARLOTTE 8
BILOXI, Miss. _ First came the dramatic, followed by the emphatic, as Southern Miss turned the tables on Charlotte Saturday at MGM Park.
Taylor Braley hit a two-run home run in the bottom of the ninth inning as the Golden Eagles scored five runs in their final two at-bats to claim a 6-5 victory against the 49ers in the semifinals of The First, A National Banking Association, Conference USA Championship.
That forced a second game between the two, and Southern Miss got home runs by Matt Wallner and Daniel Keating and a key, two-run double from Bryant Bowen in a four-run eighth inning to take a 10-8 victory.
The 2017 Golden Eagles (48-13), who have won 18 of their last 19 games, now stand as winningest team in the baseball program’s history.
But more importantly to the players and coaches, Saturday’s double-dip propelled Southern Miss from the elimination bracket and into a second, consecutive appearance in the C-USA tourney title game.
The top-seeded Golden Eagles, who won the 2017 regular-season title, will be seeking to defend the tournament crown they won last spring in Hattiesburg when they meet Rice (30-29) in a rematch of 2016 championship game.
“Right now, it’s all about attitude,” Southern Miss coach Scott Berry said. “It’s confidence and belief in one another. Our guys are having fun and they’re winning doing it.
“We talked last night about coming in to (Saturday), and that we didn’t win (Friday) night to just show up and lose (Saturday), and that was the same message going into this game. We didn’t have an emotional, great victory over Charlotte in game one just to lose (Saturday) night.”
And the 11th-ranked Golden Eagles did not, overcoming a four-error second inning that handed the 49ers five unearned runs, eventually breaking a 6-6 tie with four runs in the top of the eighth.
“We’ve played some really good teams this year, but Southern Miss is the best team we’ve played,” Charlotte coach Loren Hibbs said. “They’re very physical and can beat you in a lot of different ways.
“We lost to the best team in our league. The best team in our league had to knock us out of the conference tournament.”
Hibbs paused.
“It was a long day,” he said.
A day that started at 12:30 p.m. and for the better part of seven innings, Charlotte seemed to have the first game in hand.
But Southern Miss erased a 5-1 deficit over the last two innings, with Braley’s two-run, walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth inning giving the Golden Eagles their seventh walk-off victory of the season.
“I just calmed down, and said just try to barrel one up and keep the inning going,” Braley said. “That’s just kind of how it came out.”
Fourth-seeded Charlotte (34-23) was just three outs away from reaching its first C-USA title game since 1998.
“They’re a bunch of guys you just never doubt,” Berry said. “We’ve seen it time and time again, and saw it again (Saturday).
Charlotte led from the first pitch on, when leadoff man Zach Jarrett took the first offering from Southern Miss left-hander Stevie Powers over the left-field wall for a 1-0 lead.
The 49ers nicked Powers for two more runs in the second, the first on Harris Yett’s single and the other on a fielding/throwing error by Tracy Hadley.
But Hayden Roberts entered in the third inning, and slowed the 49ers’ roll.
Roberts went 5 2/3 innings, allowing two runs on three hits, walking none while striking out three.
Roberts gave up a run in the fifth on Brett Zetzer’s sacrifice fly to put the 49ers ahead 4-0 but the Golden Eagles got one back in fifth when Mason Irby scored on Matt Wallner’s run-scoring double.
Charlotte tacked on another run in the top of the eighth inning on Reece Hampton’s bloop double into shallow center field off reliever Nick Sandlin, putting the 49ers up 5-1 and six outs away from Sunday.
“It wasn’t pretty for seven innings, other than Hayden Roberts going out there and keeping Charlotte down and giving this offense a chance because we feel like if there’re still outs on the board, we can score runs, and that’s what they did,” Berry said.
Indeed.
In the eighth inning, Braley walked and Wallner was hit by a pitch to lead off, bringing in reliever Josh Maciejewski from the bullpen.
Hunter Slater greeted him with a two-run triple ripped just inside the first-base bag and into the right-field corner and getting the Golden Eagles to 5-3.
Hadley then lined a single into left field to pull Southern Miss within 5-4.
Sandlin (9-1) held Charlotte down in the top of the ninth, setting up the dramatics in the bottom of the inning.
Irby walked off Maciejewski (5-5) before Braley connected for his 16th home run of the season. The ball disappeared into the trees just beyond the left-field netting, and a few moments later, Braley disappeared into the mob awaiting him at home plate.
“Honestly, I had a feeling he was going to leave the yard,” Berry said. “He’s just that kind of player.”
That set up game two, and the Golden Eagles jumped out to 3-0 lead on Wallner’s team-high 18th home run of the season in the first inning.
But Southern Miss starter Hunter Stevens was sabotaged by four errors in the bottom of the second inning, as Charlotte went up 5-3.
But little-used junior Cooper Jones came in to get the final out of the inning, and then stayed in to give the Golden Eagles four more shutout innings, allowing three singles, while walking none and striking out two.
Keating’s 11th home run of the season, a two-run shot in the fifth inning, tied the game, and Bowen singled and eventually came around to score on Matthew Guidry’s grounder to give the Golden Eagles a 6-5 lead.
Charlotte tied the game 6-6 on Logan Sherer’s double in the seventh inning, but the Golden Eagles rallied for a 10-6 lead an inning later.
Charlotte reliever Brandon Vogler (1-3) was lifted after walking Irby and Braley to lead off the eighth, and Wallner greeted new reliever J.D. Prochaska with a single to the opposite field to load the bases.
After Prochaska struck out Slater, Bowen ripped a double into the left-field corner to put Southern Miss ahead 8-6. Wallner would score moments later on a wild pitch and LeeMarcus Boyd added a double later in the inning to put the Golden Eagles up four runs.
Sandlin (10-1), who picked up his second win of the day, got through a scoreless eighth inning before being touched for a two-run triple by Reece Hampton in the ninth.
But Sandlin caught Zack Smith looking at strike three to end the game.
Wallner finished with three hits, three runs scored and three RBIs for Southern Miss, while had two hits and two RBIs.
Brett Netzer led Charlotte with three hits and two runs scored, while Hampton and Sherer had two hits each.