STATESBORO, Ga. – Brendan Donovan’s RBI single in the bottom of the 10th inning scored Dylan Hardy from third base with the winning run as South Alabama took a thrilling 7-6 win over host Georgia Southern in the championship game of the Sun Belt Conference Baseball Championship.
Donovan, named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player, lined a 2-2 pitch over the head of drawn-in Eagle left fielder C. J. Ballard for the game-winner as the Jaguars (39-19) won their first league tournament since 2005 and claimed the Sun Belt’s automatic berth into the NCAA Tournament. The pairings for that tournament will be announced Monday afternoon at 11 a.m. CT.
Donovan’s game-winner capped a wild final two innings, during which Georgia Southern (38-21) had taken its first lead of the game on Ryan Cleveland’s three-run homer off Jaguar closer Matt Peacock in the top of the ninth inning. That gave the Eagles a 6-4 lead, and it appeared that Georgia Southern would claim its first Sun Belt crown in its third year in the conference.
However, Hardy and teammate Eddie Paparella led off the bottom of the ninth with back-to-back solo home runs off Eagle pitcher Evan Challenger to tie the game. South Alabama left the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth to force extra innings, but the Eagles also loaded the bases and left them loaded in the top of the 10th.
Hardy drew a walk from reliever Adam Kelly (1-1) with one out in the bottom of the 10th and pinch hitter Paul Russo followed with a single to right field to send Hardy to third base. Reliever Jacob Condra-Bogan came on for Georgia Southern and gave up Donovan’s game-winner.
That winning hit made a winner of USA reliever Avery Geyer (3-2), who came on in the ninth to get the final out and worked out of the bases-loaded jam in the top of the 10th. The Eagles tried a squeeze play with one out, but pinch hitter Cal Baker bunted back to Geyer and he threw to catcher Carter Perkins to get Evan McDonald at the plate. Jordan Wren then flew out to end the inning.
The Jaguars, who have now won 12 Sun Belt tournament titles in league history, led virtually the entire game after single runs in the third, fourth and fifth innings. Georgia Southern’s Steven Curry had a two-run single in the sixth off USA freshman starter Andy Arguelles to cut the margin to 3-2, but Hunter Stokes had a one-out solo homer in the bottom of that inning for a two-run margin.
The Eagles cut that margin to one in the eighth when Mitchell Golden led off with a single and scored on a double-play ground ball, and Logan Baldwin singled and Tyler Martin drew a walk to lead off the ninth. Cleveland then took a 3-2 pitch over the wall in right-center field, his 15th of the year and his second of the tournament.
Will Luft’s sacrifice fly in the third inning off Georgia Southern starter Seth Shuman scored Stokes with the game’s first run, and the Jaguars got two-out RBI hits in each of the next two innings to take the 3-0 lead. Drew LaBounty’s single to left scored Travis Swaggerty in the fourth and Donovan had an RBI double to plate Hardy in the fifth.
The Eagles, who also lost in last year’s tournament title game to Louisiana, left eight runners on base in the game’s first four innings as Arguelles worked his way out of trouble with six strikeouts. Georgia Southern also had a runner thrown out at the plate in the second when Evan McDonald tried to score on Curry’s two-out single to right. Shuman had set the Jaguars down in order in each of the first two innings before Stokes’ hit to lead off the third.
Donovan was joined on the All-Tournament team by teammates Hardy, Swaggerty, Carter Perkins, Randy Bell and Tyler Carr. Baldwin, Martin, Jordan Wren and Brian Eichhorn represented Georgia Southern on the team that also included Texas State’s Theodore Hoffman and Jonathan Ortega and Arkansas State’s Alex Howard and Tyler Zuber.