Baseball: Suit slams door on UHV
February 08, 2013
SHREVEPORT, La. - Ben Suit earned his first save of the young season as he struck out Brandon Bohanon to close the door on the University of Houston-Victoria Jaguars lifting the no. 2 LSU Shreveport Pilots to a 7-6 win in the home-opener at Pilot Field.
The Jags got the scoring started with a single run in the opening inning but the Pilots scorched back with a six spot in the bottom half of the inning. Ridge Gonsoulin started his perfect 3-3 night at the dish with a two-run homer to give the Pilots the lead 2-1 while K. J. Semien and Kym Barthel each drove in a run with a single in the inning as the Pilots led 6-1 after one.
UHV (2-1) settled down changing pitchers after the first and held the Pilots to just two hits until the eighth inning when Gonsoulin started the inning with a single on the first pitch he saw from Jose Muniz. He later advanced to second on a wild pitch but the next two Pilots could not bring him around. Semien answered the call with a rbi-single to left which proved to be the game-winner as he finished with a pair of hits and rbis.
Paul Barton (1-0) picked up the win for the Pilots tossing the first five innings of the contest allowing six hits, two earned runs, three walks, and five strikeouts. Barton did a decent job of pitching out of trouble despite allowing base runners in every inning as the Jags stranded seven of their 13 base runners with him on the mound.
The Pilots bullpen struggled until Jacob Byrd came in in the top of the 8th to retire the final batter of the inning leaving another runner in scoring position. Byrd returned to the mound for the 9th but did not get much help defensively as the Pilots committed two errors that helped the Jags close to within one. To help shift the momentum LSUS went to the pen for the 5th and final time calling on Suit to finish the game.
LSUS had eight hits with Gonsoulin and Semien being the only hitters with multi-hits. The lone offensive standout for UHV was Tyler Steiner who was the only one with at least two hits as he finished 2-5. The UHV starter Nathan Falkenstine (0-1) suffered the loss allowing most of the damage in the bottom of the first tossing 35 pitches.
The same two teams will meet tomorrow with a double-header set for 1 p.m.
