The Official Student News Media of Southeastern Louisiana University

The Lion's Roar

The Official Student News Media of Southeastern Louisiana University

The Lion's Roar

The Official Student News Media of Southeastern Louisiana University

The Lion's Roar

    Lions go 2-2 in Sacred Heart series

    After a rainy weekend postponed one game, the Lions managed to halve a four game series against the Sacred Heart Pioneers of  Fairfield, CT, from Saturday, March 5, to Monday, March 7.

     The opening game saw the Pioneers stave off the Lions late rally, and end the ball game 9-8. Senior left fielder Jeff Harkensee paved the way for the offense, going three for five, with four runs batted in. On the hill, redshirt freshman Jason Greenleaf and senior Brandon Efferson gave up eight runs in 3 innings of work, until junior Josh Janway came in to stop the bleeding, allowing only one unearned run in 5 innings.

    Southeastern repaid the favor the next day, sweeping both games of a double header by a wide margin.

    In the first game, junior third baseman Jonathan Pace led the offense, going three for four with two runs batted in. Senior pitcher Tyler Watkins pitched to most of the hitters, going seven strong innings, giving up no runs and striking out two, putting the score at 10-0.

    The second game fared just as well as the first for the Lions, with the ninth inning finding the score 11-3. Junior pitcher Joseph Koon pitched seven innings, striking out seven, and giving up all three runs, only two of which were earned. Senior Cass Hargis and Harkensee combined for five runs batted in during the contest.

    The final game of the series rounded out the hard-fought series fittingly, by going into extra innings. The scoring opened up in the top of the second inning, when Pioneer third baseman Chris Whittemore hit a sacrifice grounder that scored catcher Derick Horn. The Lions would score in the bottom of the fourth inning, but Sacred Heart would counter with two runs of their own in the top of the fifth. At the end of nine, the score was all tied up at three.

    But, in the top of the tenth inning, the Pioneer offense got to sophomore reliever Stefan Lopez, tagging him for two runs. The Lions offense couldn’t pull it together in the bottom half, and the Lions lost the final game, 5-3.

    Afterwards, Coach Jay Artigues pointed towards the anemic offense as the curse of the game.

    “Offensively our hitters are really struggling right now, they’re not doing a good job,” said Artigues. “Our pitchers did their job, our hitters just need to do their part, and we’re not doing it right now.”

    The players shared in the feelings with Artigues.

    “We didn’t really battle at the plate,” said junior shortstop Justin Boudreaux. “We didn’t get the timely hits that we needed to score runs. The pitchers pitched well, our pitching kept us in the game, and offensively we didn’t do our job.”

    Even though the Lions dropped two of the four games, they’re still looking towards the future.

    “This loss hurts, but I mean, it’ll make us better,” said Boudreaux. “And it lets us know what we need to do, and we’re looking forward to the rest of the season and not looking back at what we did.”

     

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