HOUSTON – No. 3 Charlotte knocked off No. 7 Middle Tennessee with a 12-9 win in the opening game of day four of the 2023 Conference USA Baseball Championship on Saturday morning from Reckling Park in Houston on the campus of Rice University. The 49ers’ win forces an elimination game at 4 p.m. CT with a championship game spot on the line later in the day Saturday.
 
Charlotte opened the scoring in the bottom of the first inning when Jack Dragum put a charge into one for a two-run shot to left-center to give the 49ers an early lead. Brandon Stahlman then drove in Cam Fisher on a double down the right field line to make it 3-0.
 
Middle Tennessee responded with a pair of runs of their own in the top half of the second when Briggs Rutter hit a solo blast to straightaway center off of the batter’s eye to cut the lead to 3-1. Eston Snider then came through with a two-out, RBI triple to make it 3-2.
 
The 49ers tacked on another run in the bottom of the third, courtesy of a Will Butcher RBI groundout to make it 4-2.
 
MTSU inched closer in the top of the fifth, as nine-hole hitter Luke Vinson led off the frame with a single. He advanced to second on a wild pitch, and eventually came around to score thanks to a couple productive outs. JT Mabry flew out to deep left, and Vinson tagged to third, and then Vinson scored on an RBI groundout by Brett Coker to cut the lead to 4-3.
 
Fisher flexed his strength again – hitting his C-USA tournament record fifth home run of the week when he took James Sells deep in the bottom of the fifth for a two-run homer to stretch the 49ers’ lead to 6-3. It was Fisher’s 29^th home run of the year, already a program record for a single season at Charlotte, and he’s one shy of Jason Sparks’ (Tulane) Conference USA single season record of 30, which has stood since 1998.
 
Pinch hitter Eli Weisner then hit a two-run shot of his own to push the Charlotte advantage to 8-3 and bust things open for the 49ers.
 
The Blue Raiders pulled a run back to cut things to 8-4 when Jackson Galloway went yard to left field with a solo shot in the top of the sixth.
 
Dragum hit his second home run of the game, and the team’s 11^th of the tournament, with a solo shot to left in the bottom of the sixth, to reestablish Charlotte’s five-run advantage. The 49ers kept the pressure on, finishing the frame with a four-spot and pushed the lead to 12-4 with a two-run double by Stahlman and an RBI single by Kaden Hopson.
 
Middle Tennessee scratched across one run in the eighth, and Jeremiah Boyd crushed a grand slam, the first for the Blue Raiders all season, to deep left field to cut the lead to 12-9, however they were unable to climb all the way back, dropping their first game of the tournament.