Baseball | 2/18/2019 5:36:00 PM

Braves Return To Louisiana For Mid-Week Showdown With Nicholls

Alcorn Game Notes

THIBODAUX, La. – The Alcorn baseball team will make the trek back down to Louisiana on Tuesday as the Braves will go head-to-head with the Colonels of Nicholls. What was originally a two-game series has now been condensed into a single contest at 4 p.m. at Ray E. Didier Field
 
The purple and gold opened the season last weekend in New Orleans as it took part in the MLB Urban Invitational. Alcorn won its matchup with Arkansas Pine-Bluff, which was sandwiched between defeats to Prairie View A&M and Southern in cross-divisional clashes.
 
Alcorn was an offensive juggernaut over the three-game weekend stretch, knocking in 22 runs via 23 hits, including three homers.
 
Senior Brandon Barna was the catalyst of the offensive explosion for Alcorn State, batting .400 with four hits, four RBIs, and two runs scored, while posting a .500 on-base percentage thanks to three walks. Barna is 22 hits away from 100 in his career. He'd become the 48th player in school history to reach that milestone.
 
Senior pitcher Carlos Lopez had a stellar debut to the 2019 season, punching out six Prairie View hitters, giving up only three hits and two earned runs through five innings of work in a steady rain.
 
Lopez enters the ballgame ranked fifth all-time in school history in career strikeouts with 178. He needs 42 more to break Steve Easter's mark of 219 set in 2012.

Senior Kirt Cormier and junior Kyle Jenkins provided the power stroke for Alcorn as the two backstops accumulated two round-trippers and eight RBIs combined for the Braves with junior infielder Micah Walker launching a big fly of his own.
 
Junior Travaris Cole rounded out the list of Braves with multiple runs batted in, as he drove in three while reaching base at a .429 clip.
 
Senior infielder Brendly Martina extended his hitting streak to five and on-base streak to 14 with a single in the win over Arkansas-Pine Bluff Saturday afternoon. He ended the 2018 campaign with base knocks in his final four appearances and reached base in his previous 12 games of last season.
 
Junior Abdallah Salman recorded his first win and save of the year when he shut the door on UAPB on Saturday. The southpaw gave up only one hit and striking out two Golden Lions batters over two frames out of the pen to pick up the Braves' first victory.
 
Nicholls was picked to finish in ninth place of the Southland Conference heading into 2019 and started the year by taking two-of-three from Southern Illinois.
 
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