LITTLE ROCK - Little Rock baseball gave up a late lead to fall 3-2 in extra innings to Georgia Southern on Saturday night at
Gary Hogan Field.
The Trojans move to 17-12 for the year while dropping to 6-4 in conference play.
Chandler Fidel had a great performance on the mound for the Trojans as he allowed no runs and only three hits while getting a season-high 10 strikeouts in 7.0 innings pitched.
Matt Merino pushed his hitting streak to eight games after going 3-for-5 and scoring once.
Marcus Ragan and
Ryan Benavidez each had a pair of hits on the evening while
Riley Pittman reached base three times off walks — two of them intentional.
The game was locked at zero for most of the night until Little Rock took a 2-0 lead in the sixth inning.
Chase Coker began the inning by making a hustle play on a chopper to the shortstop to beat the throw.
Matt Merino came up after him and smacked a double to right field to put Coker on third with
Troy Alexander coming up with no outs.
Alexander did his part by hitting a deep sacrifice fly to left field to score Coker from third and put the first run on the board. Little Rock was not done as
Kale Emshoff hit his 12th double of the year with a shot down the left field line to score Merino and put the Trojans up 2-0.
The ball was handed off to
Donavin Buck in the eighth where he had a short outing after putting two on base from a single and a dropped-ball error by Benavidez in left. Buck then gave up a single to score the runner from second and prompted head coach
Chris Curry to bring in
Justin Garcia.
Garcia was working with runners on first and second and one out and was able to get a fielder's choice ground ball to advance the runner to third. He then threw a wild pitch to the backstop and allowed the runner to score and tie the game.
Neither team could get runs on the board in the ninth, and that put Little Rock in its fourth extra-innings game of the year.
Garcia then walked two in the 10th and allowed a single to load the bases with one out. The Eagles' Mitchell Golden hit a sacrifice fly to right to score the eventual game-winning run.
Little Rock and Georgia Southern will play the series finale tomorrow at 11 a.m. at
Gary Hogan Field. The series was reduced to two games due to today's scheduled doubleheader being dropped to one game because of rain throughout most of the day.
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