STATESBORO, Ga. – Arkansas State’s Red Wolves put up the second-highest scoring total in Sun Belt conference baseball tournament history, rapping out seven extra-base hits on the way to a runaway 21-4 win over Georgia State in the opening game of the Sun Belt Conference Baseball Championship here Thursday at J.I. Clements Stadium.
The seventh-seeded Red Wolves (27-26) used an 11-run fifth inning to break open an 8-4 game and eventually take a run-rule win over the 10th-seeded Panthers (22-23). A-State’s 21 runs came within one of the tournament record set by Jacksonville in a 22-6 win over Louisiana in the opening round of the 1994 tournament.
Alex Howard’s three-run homer in the third inning off Panther losing pitcher Hunter Gaddis (4-4) gave the Red Wolves a 6-1 advantage, and nine-hole hitter Drew Tipton had a grand slam during the 11-run fifth. A-State took advantage of nine walks and five hit batsmen given up by Georgia State pitching.
Meanwhile, four Red Wolves pitchers combined to hold the Panthers to only four hits. Starter Bradley Welsh did give up three runs in the fifth inning and first reliever Tyler Mitzel forced two of those runs in on bases-loaded walks with nobody out, but reliever Tyler Zuber (5-1) coaxed a double-play ground ball and an inning-ending fly ball.
Moments later, the Wolves used three hits, an error, six walks and a hit batsman in the game-breaking fifth inning, with Tipton’s first grand slam providing the final four runs.
Arkansas State will face second-seeded UTA in Friday’s 12:30 p.m. ET quarterfinal round.
The Red Wolves struck first with three runs in the second inning off Gaddis, two of them scoring when Panther shortstop Justin Jones dropped Derek Birginske’s two-out infield popup that allowed Howard and Jeremy Brown to score. Tipton followed with an RBI double for the 3-0 lead.
Jones’ sacrifice fly in the third plated Will Kilgore to cut the difference to 3-1, but Gaddis hit Garrett Rucker and Justin Felix to set up Howard’s homer on a 3-2 pitch, his fourth of the year, that made it a five-run game.
Joe Schrimpf’s two-run single and Howard’s RBI single were the only other A-State hits in the fifth inning other than Tipton’s grand slam, and Brown added a two-run single in the sixth for the Wolves’ final two runs.
Bo Ritter threw the final two innings for the Wolves, allowing only one hit.
Arkansas State, winners of its last four games, has now scored 49 runs in its last three outings and took its fourth win over the Panthers this season after A-State swept the regular-season series between the teams. The Red Wolves’ run-rule victory was the first in the tournament since the 2014 season when A-State took a 12-0 shortened-game win over Troy.