BRACKET | CHAMPIONSHIP CENTRAL
MONTGOMERY, Ala. – Neither Braxton Church nor Phillip Cole was on App State baseball coach Kermit Smith’s lineup card Tuesday.
The two entered Tuesday’s second game of the Guardian Credit Union Sun Belt Baseball Championship presented by Troy University as a pinch hitter and a defensive replacement respectively in the bottom two spots in the batting order.
It’s a good bet that both will see more action in the tournament, since that pair made sure the ninth-seeded Mountaineers survived the single-elimination round. The two accounted for five runs in back-to-back at-bats in the sixth inning, helping App State snap a 2-2 tie and go on to a 10-3 win over No. 8 seed Little Rock in Tuesday’s final elimination game.
Church laced a two-out, bases-loaded single in an inning that featured five Mountaineer hits, and Cole followed with his third homer of the year over the left-field wall to plate three more runs and boost App State (20-32) into Wednesday’s 12:30 p.m. game against second-seeded Georgia Southern.
“That speaks to the character of our team,” said App State coach Kermit Smith. “Every guy is ready on any given call. He (Cole) wasn’t in the starting lineup and he could have sat over there and pouted about it, and he didn’t. He supported his teammates, got an opportunity and popped one for us which was huge. I thought the momentum really shifted once that ball went out of the ball park.”
The six-run rally in the sixth helped support a Mountaineer pitching performance that included a season-high 17 strikeouts from four pitchers. Starter Jason Cornatzer fanned seven in three and two-thirds innings, while Caleb Cross (3-1, three strikeouts), Cameron Kepley (four) and Grey LaSpaluto (three) combined on a five-hitter. LaSpaluto’s closing performance came after a rain and lightning delay of one hour and 50 minutes as part of a game that took 5:56 to complete.
“Everybody that touched the mound for us tonight did a really, really good job,” Smith said, “obviously walking into the tournament and having that kind of performance from four different guys through a rain delay and all the other factors that go into it. Some shaky defense early, but to come out of that and stay the course, our pitching staff obviously gets the game ball tonight.”
Little Rock (24-27) had taken a 2-0 lead in the third inning, with a pair of Mountaineer errors and Canyon McWilliams’ sacrifice fly plating the two runs. However the Trojans left the baes loaded in the second and fourth innings and left two on base in the fifth without scoring a run.
“We left 13 on base, you’re not going to beat anybody like that,” said Trojan coach Chris Curry. “We hadn’t been doing that lately. We had our opportunity. They (App State) did a great job getting the win and getting the big hits, and their bullpen did an outstanding job through the final few innings starting and stopping through the rain delay. They got the big hits and we did not.”
None of the hits was bigger than Cole’s home run, which finished off the six-run inning and gave the Mountaineers an 8-2 lead. His homer came after Trojan starter Hayden Arnold, the league’s reigning Pitcher of the Week, left with the score tied 2-2 and reliever Sawyer Smallwood (5-6) gave up Church’s two-run single before being pulled in favor of reliever Hoss Brewer.
“Early in the at-bat I got a lot of fast balls and I was missing them,” Cole said. “They were good pitches. I got a late breaking ball that I saw really good out of his hand, I thought he wasn’t landing them and maybe I’ll get another fast ball late in the at-bat. I was in a two-strike approach and just got my hands through and got the ball to left center. I think it just picked us up and we just ran with it from that point on.”
Little Rock got one back in the sixth on McWilliams’ bloop single that scored Jorden Hussein, but App State tacked on a run on Dylan Rogers’ one-out RBI single in the seventh and Andrew Greckel’s RBI single in the eighth before the rain delay that came with one out in the bottom of the eighth.