MARION, Ill. – Facing elimination and needing a response, Little Rock once again leaned on its resilience Thursday night at Mountain Dew Park.
Brigden Parker delivered one of his best outings of the season, while the Trojans used timely hitting and late composure to hold off Lindenwood for a 4-3 victory in the Ohio Valley Conference Tournament. Little Rock advanced to Friday afternoon's elimination game with Southern Indiana and improved to 32-26 overall.
"Big-time quality start out of Brigden Parker," Little Rock head coach Chris Curry said. "He's delivered in big games all year. We shook it up a little bit. He's been going the second game every weekend, but we felt Nic Bronzini was a better matchup earlier and thought Brigden matched up really well tonight. We needed it badly because we've got a long hill to climb."
The Trojans and Screaming Eagles are scheduled to meet at 1 p.m. Friday after weather forced league officials to move up the start time from 3 p.m. The winner of that game will play the loser of Friday's winner's bracket semifinal at 4:30 p.m.
Little Rock beat USI, the No. 8 seed, 7-3 on Wednesday night in its tournament opener. The Screaming Eagles then dropped into the elimination bracket and upset No. 3 seed Southeast Missouri on Thursday. Friday's matchup will mark the fourth game of the tournament for USI, the league program located closest to Marion, just over an hour away.
"Chip and a chair," Curry said. "That's what we've said. We're not dead yet. This team always responds. One-and-0 is all we're trying to be. We'll get ready for tomorrow at one o'clock and keep playing."
Parker did his part Thursday night to prolong the season. The senior left-hander carried a shutout into the seventh inning and finished with a season-high eight strikeouts while allowing just three runs on five hits.
"It was just going out there and playing as hard as I could for as long as I could," Parker said. "Job's not finished. Now I get to be the biggest cheerleader and watch these guys keep battling."
Little Rock struck first in the opening inning when Nolan Freund ripped an RBI double to right-center field to score Angel Cano and give the Trojans an early 1-0 lead. The Trojans then created separation in the fourth inning.
After loading the bases, Little Rock pushed across a run on a Lindenwood error before Freund delivered again with an RBI single through the left side to make it 3-0. The Trojans added another insurance run in the fifth inning to extend the advantage to 4-0.
Parker cruised through six scoreless innings before Lindenwood made its push in the seventh. A hit batter and walk set up a three-run homer by Sam Driscoll that suddenly cut the lead to one.
"The one bad inning there in the seventh started with a hit-by-pitch and then a walk behind it," Curry said. "Give Lindenwood credit."
Despite the momentum swing, Curry said the Trojans never panicked.
"We've got a lot of older guys, and there was really no panic," Curry said. "We were disappointed because baseball-wise we shouldn't have been in that spot. The home run was preceded by a walk and a hit-by-pitch. We also ran ourselves into a few outs on the bases and need to clean that up, but everybody stayed really calm."
Redshirt freshman Tag Andrews came on out of the bullpen and helped close things out as Little Rock survived another postseason test.
