STATESBORO, Ga. – A 13-hit attack and solid pitching from starter Connor Reich and reliever Anthony Pagano helped lead Texas State’s eighth-seeded Bobcats to a 7-5 upset win over top seed Coastal Carolina here Friday in the third quarterfinal of the Sun Belt Conference Baseball Championship.
The Bobcats (29-29), who had to win a 3-2 nail biter over Little Rock Thursday night to advance to the quarterfinal round, pushed across four runs in the second inning and never trailed in eliminating the defending national champion Chanticleers, who had the Sun Belt’s best regular-season record (22-7-1).
Reich (3-5) scattered eight hits over six innings of work, and Pagano came on in the seventh and retired seven straight batters in earning his first save of the year. The Chanticleers (37-19-1) put the tying runs on base with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning when Jordan Gore had a two-out single and Kevin Woodall Jr. walked, but Pagano got a game-ending fly ball from Wood Myers to send the Bobcats to Saturday’s semifinals.
Texas State, which took two of three from Coastal in their regular-season series in San Marcos, Texas, will face the winner of Friday’s late quarterfinal matching fourth-seeded Louisiana and fifth-seeded and tournament host Georgia Southern.
The Bobcats got to Chanticleer starter Andrew Beckwith (8-2) in the second inning on an RBI single by Jacob Almendarez and a two-run double by Jonathan Ortega that plated Ryan Newman and Almendarez. Ortega scored moments later when Woodall dropped an infield fly ball at first base, one of three errors the Chanticleers committed in the first two innings.
Coastal cut the difference to 4-2 on Josh Crump’s two-run double in the bottom of the inning, and Myers’ single one inning later plated Gore to make it a one-run game. But Reich stranded runners in each of the next two innings, and the Bobcats strung together three hits in the fourth inning on singles by Almendarez, Derek Scheible and Ortega that scored two more runs.
Ortega doubled home Scheible, who had a two-out single, in the fifth inning for a 7-3 lead before Coastal Carolina reliever Alex Cunningham came on and scattered three hits the rest of the way and not allowing a Texas State runner past second base.
Seth Lancaster cut that four-run margin in half in the bottom of the sixth, when he followed Kieton Rivers’ leadoff single with a mammoth two-run homer over the 25-foot wall in right field for his sixth homer of the year. But Reich pitched out of further trouble, and after a leadoff single by Woodall in the seventh, Pagano came on to coax a double-play grounder and allowed only the two baserunners in the final inning.