Baseball’s inherent fickleness dictated things would, at some point, get difficult for McNeese State. It’s made winning look rather simple during this eye-popping 24-game stretch, receiving a plethora of timely hits and more than adequate pitching while opponents wilted in oppression.
Though it staked starter Bryan King to a 5-0 lead after two innings, King refused to command the baseball and McNeese’s usually efficient bullpen was anything but its trademark. Matt Gallier, the team’s heartbeat in the cleanup spot who sported a .400 batting average entering the game, struck out three times — including twice with the bases loaded.
“That’s what makes teams go from being good to really good,” leadoff hitter Robbie Podorsky said, “having different guys to step up on different days to pick each other up just on any given day.”
Podorksy launched a solo home run in the fourth — just his second ever in organized baseball — and McNeese scored in each of the first six innings to subdue a scrappy Nicholls club to clinch its third Southland Conference series sweep, 11-8, and push its home winning streak to 16 games.
Nate Fisbeck, hitless in his previous 10 at-bats and scuffling since his nationally renowned opening weekend, smacked a three-RBI double off the left field wall in the first inning to produce a 4-0 lead — one in peril for most of the game but one McNeese never ultimately relinquished.
“That was huge, we scored pretty much every single inning and I think that got us going a little bit offensively,” Fisbeck said. “Yesterday, I hit a few hard and they were right to people, but today to get a fastball and drive it over their heads was big.”
Fisbeck drove in four and Podorsky added three hits. Shane Selman hit his third home run of the season in the third inning, providing an answer to Nicholls’ two-run frame and wrestling momentum. Nicholls scored in four innings Saturday. McNeese answered it in three of those four.
“It shows what we’re capable of, that we don’t really settle down and get content with what we have, we just keep plugging,” “Fisbeck said. “The confidence is there and whenever the confidence is there and you have the lineup that we do, it’s contagious.”
Coach Justin Hill’s Friday night plaudits were prescient. After the 9-2 Cowboys win, the skipper praised starter Austin Sanders, who recovered from a 66-pitch struggle in the first three frames to finish seven innings in the Cowboys’ series-opening win.
Hill approached the senior lefty following the game, applauding his efforts for more than just the night’s result. Sanders saved the bullpen, he said, leaving the team’s most reliable relievers unused and fresher should another rotation member encounter problems in his start.
King, who entered with 19 walks in 20 innings, encountered many. He had little feel for his three-pitch arsenal and did not record an out in the fourth inning, lifted in favor of Grant Anderson after falling behind 1-0 to Colonels seven-hole hitter Joey Morales with his 74th pitch.
Anderson, Trent Fontenot and Collin Kober — neither of whom threw in any of the two other games — pieced together five of the remaining six innings. Though the trio allowed 11 hits, it only permitted four runs.
Fontenot faced the tying run in the sixth and seventh inning, first inducing a harmless grounder in the seventh and, in the eighth, uncorking a wild pitch with two in scoring position. The ball careened off the backstop and straight to Dustin Duhon, who tagged Chet Niehaus attempting to score.
Peyton McLemore added a scoreless eighth, demonstrating the reliability he’s beginning to present with a string of eye-raising outings.
“Them being fresh, I think that certainly played into it.” Hill said of his relievers. “They’ve been so rock solid for us. It did afford us the luxury of using one less arm or something. We were shooting at them. We knew we had to throw our best guys at them.”
Hill used the proceedings as a primer of sorts, likening it to a future destination where everything is on the line.
“That was just a different ballgame than any we’ve played this year,” Hill said. “It felt like a conference tournament ballgame and we’re going to have more like that, that’s just the way it is, but we’re going to have more like that. Good to come out on top with this one.”
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