The baseball team opened its season at the University of Southern Mississippi this past weekend, dropping all four games to start 0-4.
Despite the sweep, senior outfielder Easton Brenner said that the team was satisfied with its performance in the series.
“I thought that there were some positives to the weekend,” Brenner said. “We had the occasional error, but for not being able to be on a field for a couple months, I thought we played pretty clean baseball.”
After keeping Friday’s series opener within one run after seven innings, the Leopards ceded eight runs to the Golden Eagles (5-0 overall) in the bottom of the eighth inning to blow the game open. A two-run home run by freshman outfielder Jack Mislan in the top of the ninth prevented the shutout, but the Leopards fell 9-2.
The teams returned to action on Saturday for a doubleheader, the first game proving to be the closest of the series. After Southern Miss jumped ahead 2-0 in the first inning, the Maroon and White responded in the fifth with a two-run single from junior catcher Ethan Swidler. The Leopards took a 5-2 lead in the sixth courtesy of a solo shot off the bat of senior infielder Ben Petrone and two RBIs off a Brenner double.
“From an offensive standpoint, I thought it was extremely promising,” Brenner said. “We just didn’t get the big hit when we needed it a few times throughout the series, but there were multiple times we put together good ABs.”
Southern Miss responded with a 4-run rally in the seventh frame, taking a 6-5 lead. Brenner came up clutch in the ninth with a solo home run to send the game to extra innings, where a Golden Eagle sacrifice fly in the tenth would hand the Leopards the 7-6 loss.
Senior pitcher Corey Savedoff, who took the game two loss, said the team’s pitching helped it stay in the series’ first two games.
“We’ve been focusing on throwing strikes early in counts, which can help us get more strikeouts and limit our walks,” Savedoff said. “We executed the plan of forcing them to hit the ball, and we did a really good job just doing what we practiced the whole fall and winter.”
Game two of the doubleheader was far less competitive. The Leopards surrendered 18 runs in the first seven innings to put the game out of reach en route to an 18-4 blowout loss.
In the final game on Sunday, the Leopards instantly fell behind 4-0 after two innings. They would remain scoreless until the seventh inning when Brenner collected his seventh hit of the series on an RBI double to center field. Southern Miss responded with an insurance run in the bottom half of the frame, holding onto a 5-1 win and completing the sweep.
Brenner, who batted seven hits on 10 at-bats, earned Patriot League Baseball Player of the Week honors for his series performance.
Moving forward, Savedoff said that the team needs to continue its style of play in order to remain competitive.
“If we keep doing what we did this past weekend and trusting the process of just getting ahead early in counts and throwing a lot of strikes, forcing contact, I think we’re going to continue to do a really good job,” he said.
The Leopards will hit the diamond again this weekend, kicking off a three-game stand at Western Kentucky University on Friday.
