BRACKET | CHAMPIONSHIP CENTRAL
MONTGOMERY, Ala. – When ULM’s baseball squad needed a long ball, Chase DeJean delivered.
When the Warhawks needed to play the short game, they turned again to the sophomore third baseman.
DeJean’s two-run homer ignited a fifth-inning comeback from an early 3-0 deficit to Georgia State, and three innings later his squeeze bunt broke a 5-5 tie and helped boost ULM to an 8-5 win over the Panthers in the opening-round game of the Guardian Credit Union Sun Belt Baseball Championship presented by Troy University.
“I knew right when they (Georgia State) went up 3-0, I was like, all right, guys, we’ve gotta get something going,” said DeJean, whose home run was only the second hit allowed by Panther starter Trey Horton. “The last three weeks all I’ve been getting is sliders, so I sat on one, got it up in the zone and put a good swing on it. That gave us life.”
ULM trailed again by a 5-3 score entering the eighth inning, but Mason Holt led off the inning with a double and Grant Schulz followed with his sixth homer of the year that tied the game. Colby Deaville then reached on an infield single, moved to second on a passed ball and to third on an infield ground ball. That brought up DeJean.
“Coach (third base coach Matt) Colins called me down the third base line, he said get something in the air right here, sac fly, just get him in. I swung through the first one and he gave me the bunt sign.”
Georgia State pitcher Cameron Jones was just late with the flip to home as Deaville scored, and ULM catcher Matthew Lee followed with his second homer of the year to give the Warhawks (20-34-1) some breathing room and put them into Wednesday’s double-elimination opener against top-seeded Texas State at 7:30 p.m.
“You’ve got a super competitor in Jones on the mound,” said ULM coach Michael Federico. “I mean, he’s a dude, one of the best two-way guys that I’ve ever coached against. He’s one of those guys that you’re not always going to get a great swing off, and Chase is a swing-and-miss guy. We gave him a swing, tried to get the sac fly. He’s actually one of our best bunters, and I think it kind of shocked Jones a little bit.”
Georgia State (30-27), eliminated from the tournament in the opening-round game, had taken a 3-0 lead in the fourth inning on Luke Boynton’s one-out solo home run—his 12th of the year, a sacrifice fly by Will Mize and a wild pitch that scored Josh Smith after he doubled. Before that, ULM starter Cole Cressend had given up only one hit, but Georgia State’s Horton had a no-hitter entering the fifth inning before Michael Artzberger’s leadoff double.
DeJean followed with his third home run of the season, and two walks preceded Ryan Cupit’s RBI single that tied the game.
“It definitely gave us energy,” Federico said of DeJean’s homer. “One of the things we’ve been talking about the last couple of weeks was just emptying the tank, leave nothing, whether you’re on the bench or you pitch or you’re playing, just give every ounce of energy that you could. That bolt right there just kind of electrified us a little bit, got us going.”
The Panthers reclaimed the lead in the sixth on a one-out walk to Josh Smith, a stolen base and catcher Kyle Hilton’s two-out RBI single. ULM reliever and winning pitcher Carson Orton (2-1) then gave up back-to-back doubles to Jones and Max Ryerson in the seventh to give the Panthers the 5-3 lead.
Georgia State put two runners on base in both the eighth and ninth innings on an error, a walk and the two singles, but never got any closer than second base.
“We competed the entire day,” said Georgia State coach Brad Stromdahl. “The eighth inning we got two guys on with a potential game-tying home run, same thing in the ninth inning. I’m happy for our guys that we continued to fight and battle all the way to the end.”