LSU brings end to Rice’s season
Owls win earlier in day to extend run before Tigers extinguish hopes
BATON ROUGE, La. — By the championship round of a college baseball regional, pitching tends to be the big difference, and that was the case Sunday night in the championship round of the Baton Rouge Regional.
With the way LSU freshman Eric Walker eviscerated Rice for eightplus innings, though, the timing hardly mattered.
Walker tied the Owls in knots in a masterful performance that yielded a 5-0 Tigers victory and ended Rice’s late-season surge.
The Owls (33-31) produced seven hits, never more than one in the same inning until the ninth and none with a runner in scoring position.
Rice advanced to the late game by beating Southeastern Louisiana 9-5 in an elimination game earlier in the day, buoyed by a fiverun second inning and a big day from Dane Myers.
Whatever momentum the Owls had from that win fizzled quickly against Walker, though.
“He’s very advanced in terms of demeanor and knows how to pitch,” Rice coach Wayne Graham said of the Arlington native. “Rarely do you see someone like that. He really knows what he’s doing. He has a purpose with every pitch, and that’s obvious. Usually, he carries out that purpose.”
Likewise, the LSU line- up came out with a purpose against Owls freshman Addison Moss, who was making his first start. Moss got the Tigers (4617) in order in the first, but Rice started to wobble in the second when Myers couldn’t handle a hot shot off Greg Deichmann’s bat.
Josh Smith laced a double inside the first-base bag to score Deichmann, and after Beau Jordan dumped a single to left field, Michael Papierski executed a perfect safety squeeze to nudge the lead to 2-0. Jordan ran home from second when Jake Slaughter laced an RBI single to right.
Rice made some ninthinning drama when Myers and Dominic DiCaprio drilled back-to-back singles to bring a close to Walker’s night. Zack Hess came on and fanned Gray for the first out before walking Andrew Dunlap to load the bases.
Unfazed, Hess struck out Darryl Sheppard and Charlie Warren to slam the door and seal LSU’s 14th consecutive win.
“I’m real proud of our guys and their effort,” Graham said. “We were behind the 8-ball coming back from the loser’s bracket. They never kept fighting and that was evidence in the last inning.”