BEAUMONT, Texas - Lamar University baseball finished off a season sweep of LIU Brooklyn Saturday with two wins over the Blackbirds, taking the first game 2-1 and the second 8-4. The Cardinals improve to 3-0 on the season and drop LIU, a 2018 NCAA Regional team, to 0-3 on the year.
"It went really well," said head coach
Will Davis. "This weekend was a lot of fun and we got three quality starts from our starting pitchers, which was huge. Also getting three saves from three different people was great. It was good to see our defense play so well with only one true fielding error this weekend and honestly everything went very well. In the opening weekend hitting is usually a little off, so to see the big hits where we needed them was really encouraging, especially against a quality opponent."
Similar to
Jason Blanchard's spectacular start on Friday,
Noah Sills and
Grason Wright were stupendous in their starting roles on Saturday. The doubleheader duo combined for 10.2 innings of work with just eight hits, three earned runs, and five walks allowed while striking out six batters. Sills pitched a shutout until the sixth inning and Wright allowed just one hit through his first four innings.
The relief pitching was also astounding Saturday with incredible team efforts from
Austin Smith for the win and
Ryan Erickson for the save in the first game of the day,
Erik Key pitching through the sixth inning of the finale and
Douglas Palmer shutting down the Blackbird bats in the final three innings; the redshirt junior sat down eight consecutive Blackbirds and struck out five.
Jack Dallas (Friday), Erickson (Game 1 on Saturday), and Palmer (Game 2 on Saturday) each earned a save.
The Big Red bats also continued to be red hot all day Saturday, carrying over from a 6-2 win on Friday. In Saturday's first game
JC Correa earned his first Cardinal hit in very memorable fashion by slamming a solo shot over the left field fence in the fifth inning. That homer gave Lamar a 1-0 lead in the fifth which LIU Brooklyn briefly matched in the sixth inning with an RBI grounder with the bases loaded. Lamar's answer came in the eighth inning.
Cole Girouard drew a walk with two outs and reached second on a single up the middle from
Avery George. A single from
Cole Coker scored Girouard for the winning run.
Lamar quickly put the nail in the coffin in Saturday's finale by scoring four runs on four hits in the first inning. George led off the game with a single past the pitcher and advanced to third on a double by Coker down the left field line.
Jorge Gutierrez earned an RBI on a grounder to third that scored George, and
Robin Adames singled up the middle to score Coker one at-bat later. A double from Correa put both him and Adames in scoring position, and a passed ball that smacked LIU's catcher in the face scored Adames and put Correa on third. A grounder from
Logan LeJeune gave LU a 4-0 lead after just one inning.
Coker brought another Cardinal home in the second inning when he hit into a 4-6-3 double play with the bases loaded and no outs, scoring
Anthony Quirion and placing
Rhett McCall on third. LU couldn't capitalize on any other scoring opportunities in the second, but in the third
Cole Secrest doubled to center field to score Correa and Adames after they both reached on errors. Lamar led 7-0 after three.
LIU Brooklyn began to fight back into the game with three runs in the fifth and another in the sixth, but in the seventh an RBI single from Correa with runners on the corners scored Gutierrez and gave Lamar an 8-4 advantage. Palmer kept the Blackbirds at bay and LU won the day.
The Cardinals return to action on Tuesday with the first of two games at Tulane.
