Kentucky Baseball: Wildcats steal series against top ranked Tigers
While most people tuned in for Kentucky basketball over the weekend, the boys on the hardwood weren’t the only ones with a tough matchup. The Kentucky baseball squad made their way down to Baton Rouge, Louisiana to face the number one ranked Louisiana State Tigers over a three game series.
After being handed a hefty defeat by WKU earlier last week, the Wildcats walked into Alex Box Field with the thoughts that the number one team in the land could demolish the Cats even worse. Despite the concerns, the boys in blue battled quite well in game one.
After leaving two guys on base in the first, the Tigers would send players across the plate to score first for the series in the second. Andrew Stevenson would score after a Jake Fraley RBI. Fraley worked his way around the bases, and eventually find his way to home plate after a Chris Sciambra single to right center.
The Wildcats would score next, but they wouldn’t do so until the seventh inning. Dorian Hairston scored off of a Thomas Bernal single up the middle. Then after two more singles from Connor Heady and Kyle Barrett, two more Cats would score. Leaving the Wildcats with a successful inning and lead after the top of the 7th.
However, the number one ranked team wouldn’t allow that lead to last long, the Tigers answered with a run of their own after Mark Laird after a Kentucky error.
The final two innings of play would both feature three and outs, leaving the regulation innings standing at 3-3. It wouldn’t be until the 12th inning that a team would score, with that team being the Wildcats sending two runners around the diamond in the top of the inning. LSU answered with one run in the bottom of that inning, leaving Kentucky to seal the win on game number one of the series.
Game number two would feature a steady game up until the bottom of the 8th, with the Cats and Tigers tied at two. The Tigers got a late burst of wind in the bottom of the 8th, as they scored five in the bottom half of the frame. The Wildcats mustered up a one last ditch effort, scoring one in the ninth, but that wouldn’t be enough to erase the large deficit created in the 8th inning, leaving the series 1-1 after a LSU win 7-3.
The Sunday rubber match was a good one for you – if you like an offensive game, rather than a pitchers battle. The two clubs combined for 36 hits on the day, and once again needed extra innings to decide who took the series.
The Wildcats started their day off with a bang, sending four guys in for the score in the top of the 2nd. That would include a Dorian Hairston homer, a Thomas Bernal bases loaded walking score, as well as Zach Arnold and Marcus Carson running in.
LSU didn’t take too long to answer, tallying up two of their own in the 3rd, but they would let the fifth inning do majority of their talking, racking in four more runs to lead the Wildcats 6-4.
The eighth inning yet again is the one that got interesting, with both clubs sending runs in. UK got to work first, knocking four guys across home plate, and the Tigers answering with two more of their own in the bottom of the inning, leaving the Wildcats down by one, heading into the ninth.
With the game standing at two outs, and only needing one run to tie things up, pinch hitter Riley Mahan stepped up big and had an in the park homer to notch things up at 10.
The Wildcats utilized the extra innings of play, and in the 11th proved victorious as Greg Fettes homered over the left field wall, and a Marcus Carson score to place UK up two, and ending the game with an unanswered bottom of the 12th from the Tigers.
Kentucky dethroned the number one ranked LSU Tigers and won the series 2-1. The Wildcat’s next outing just so happens to be this afternoon against the Indiana Hoosiers in Lexington at 4 PM ET.