At 1-5 after two weekend series, Southern coach Chris Crenshaw was realistic about a trip across town to play No. 8 LSU. He left Alex Box Stadium sorely disappointed at his team’s 16-1 loss to the Tigers Wednesday.
The Jaguars fell behind 6-0 after two innings. Starting pitcher Daren Smith retired only one of six batters he faced. The batters collected eight hits, all singles, and the fielders committed five errors, which led to seven unearned runs. Six pitchers combined to walk seven batters, hit two, throw four wild pitches and give up four home runs.
“I saw some freshmen get out there and compete,” said Crenshaw, the jaguars’ first-year coach. “Other than that, we just laid down. I did a bad job of getting us prepared tonight.
“We’ve been a lot better than this. That was the most runs we’ve given up all year. We’ve got to get mentally tougher, figure some things out. I gave a lot of guys the experience at The Box tonight. That won’t happen again.”
Like most teams, Southern’s schedule has been limited by the COVID-19 pandemic protocols but Crenshaw had been encouraged in road series against UNO and Louisiana Tech. He was hoping for better with the SWAC season opening series coming this weekend at home against Grambling.
“We didn’t play very well at all,” right fielder Tremaine Spears said in concurrence with his coach. “It started in the first. Obviously, we didn’t do well pitching but we didn’t play well behind the pitchers. We didn’t play together as a team tonight.
“In every other game we have played, if you were at the game, you’d know we were in every game. Tonight is the worst we’ve played.”
Southern looked like it was on its way to being shut out when it put four hits back-to-back in the eighth inning to score one run, but that was emblematic of the Jaguars night. A.J. Walter started the inning with a rope down the third baseline into the bullpen, but he fell down rounding first and had to stop there.
Bubba Thompson followed with what should have been a double in them same spot as Walter’s hit, but Walter inexplicably stopped at second. Had he not, one or two runs could have scored when Quincy Smith followed with a single to right. Walter stopped at third to load the bases before Isaiah Adams delivered the run with an infield single. The Jaguars could have had more but LSU pitcher Brandon Kaminer struck out Judah Wilbur and Tremaine Spears to end the inning.
Although he pitching staff surrendered 16 runs, it pitched reasonably well at times after the second inning. Smith allowed a hit, three walks and a hit batter. The next four pitchers allowed only three walks in the following six innings.
Jerry Burkett allowed only a home run among the seven batters he faced with two strikeouts. Dimitri Frank allowed seven runs but only three were earned because of an error by Thompson at third. Caleb Washington had an effective inning getting two pop ups and a fly ball despite having another foul popup dropped by first baseman O’Neill Burgos.
“I started putting in guys that wanted a chance to play,” Crenshaw said. “They had to show they could play and I put them out there to see if they could do it.
“Jerry Burkett, Caleb Washington, Isaiah Adams, A.J. Walter, all of those guys are freshmen and came to play. The other guys we put around them didn’t do too much. We have a lot of work to do.”
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March 04, 2021 at 11:06AM
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