By Drew Parsley, Louisiana Tech Associate Director Strategic Communications; featured photo by Josh McDaniel
RUSTON — Louisiana Tech 12-9) heads into conference play on a high note after taking Tuesday’s contest against the ULM Warhawks (9-11), 6-2, at the Love Shack. The Bulldogs extend their winning streak to four straight games over the Warhawks.
ULM was kept off the board through the first four innings of the game thanks to the work put in on the mound by Kade Parker, who was making his second start of the year and fifth appearance on the mound. The junior from West Monroe earned his second win of the year after going 4 1/3 innings allowing two runs on four hits, one walk and a pair of strikeouts.
LA Tech jumped ahead to an early 3-0 lead in the first. Cade Patterson led the game off by reaching on an error by the ULM third baseman. After advancing to second on a sacrifice bunt, Colton Coates drove him in with a slap to right field. The next at-bat, Sebastian Mexico cranked a two-run blast over the right-center wall for his first one as a Bulldog and to cap off the opening inning.
A stagnant second frame kept it at 3-0 before the Bulldogs tacked on two more in the third thanks to the bat of Mexico again. After Michael Ballard and Coates singled and doubled to give the Bulldog designated hitter two runners in scoring position, Mexico delivered with a ball hit to the left-center gap to give his team a 5-0 advantage.
Brody Drost posted the ‘Dogs sixth run of the day with a ball sliced to the ULM left fielder. With the wind playing a factor, the outfielder ran from the left-center gap to near the third base foul line attempting to make a play on the ball, but his outstretched glove was just short of catching it. The ball spun towards the outfield wall and the left fielder attempted a casual pick up, but the ball kept rolling under his glove. This mishap allowed Drost to extend his standup triple to scoring a run on the batted ball.
ULM’s only two runs in the game came across in the fifth inning after the first two batters were hit by a pitch and advanced to second and third on a sacrifice bunt. The next batter drove in the Warhawks’ first run with a single through the left side of the infield before the second run came across on a bases-loaded hit-by-pitch, but all ULM could get the rest of the game was one hit.
Logan Forsythe was lights out coming out of the bullpen, tossing 2 2/3 scoreless innings with seven strikeouts allowing no hits, no runs and no walks. Connor Nation dealt well to close out the final two frames, allowing just one hit with no runs, no walks and four strikeouts.
Coates extended his hitting streak to a team-high 12 games, the longest streak any Bulldog has had this season. Drost has also been on a tear since being inserted in the starting lineup, posting a current five-game hitting streak. Mexico extended his reached-base streak to four games as well as picking up his first four-RBI game as a Bulldog.
Head Coach Lane Burroughs‘ comments after Tuesday’s win:
“A big win for us, great crowd. Every time we play Monroe, you know it’s going to be a great crowd. It was a beautiful night. [I’m] just extremely proud of our team. I thought some early clutch hitting—obviously, the first inning, I’ll give Sebastian Mexico a lot of credit. He came in saw me yesterday and basically explained to me [that] he can hit lefties. He wanted that opportunity, and he got it tonight. I said, ‘I’ll put you in there tomorrow’, because we hadn’t been playing him against lefties much. He goes two-run homer then he gets a big two-run single for us, so credit to him. When a young man has confidence in himself—and if you watched us play scrimmages in the fall or come and watched us in January, he has that capability. The wind was really howling in and out to left, I didn’t think anybody would get a ball close to going out in right or center, and he cut through the wind. He has that kind of power, and we need that bat in our lineup. He had two huge hits for us tonight. Extremely proud of our pitchers, I think we had 13 strikeouts [and] one walk. I thought Kade Parker [had] another great start, a quality start. He pitched pretty good at Oklahoma last week too. He’s been really good for us in midweeks, and I thought Logan Forsythe was outstanding. Fastball was exploding tonight, and I know early on he hit the young man in the head and he was kind of scattering the ball a little bit, but he gathered it. I thought his fastball was so good tonight, it was just kind of overpowering with anybody. That’s all he had to do was throw the ball across the plate, and he did that. We were going to make a move there at one point, and we stayed with him, got a couple of punchouts. He wanted that next inning—he asked for it and said he could take it, and it was good because we didn’t have to use [Blake] Hooks. We didn’t have to go deep in our bullpen. Luke Nichols was hot at one point in the game, didn’t have to use him, and Connor Nation came in and he was very, very efficient with those pitches in those two innings. So, 13-1 strikeouts over walks, clutch hitting—it was a good baseball game and Monroe’s got a good team. We talked about it pregame, every time we play them it doesn’t matter—records or whatever. It’s going to be intense; all these guys know each other and went to high school together and it’s a big game. We had a great crowd, thank you to our crowd for coming out and it was good to get this win. We’re playing pretty good right now.”
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