JACKSON, Miss. – The Alcorn State University baseball program dropped its seventh-straight contest on Friday night when the Jackson State Tigers led wire-to-wire in a 9-4 game one win.
Juniors Kyle Jenkins and Brandon Rembert both launched their second home runs of the season (solo and two-run homers, respectively) with Rembert's being his second in his past four appearances to provide the power for Alcorn.
Senior Brandon Barna accounted for the Braves' other RBI as his RBI single gave him 98 for his career, two shy of becoming the program's 48th batter to eclipse the 100-hit plateau.
Junior Jordan McGowan extended his on-base streak to ten games when he sliced a single to right field in the third. He joins three other Braves (junior Kirt Cormier, freshman Tristin Garcia, and Rembert) in notching an on-base streak of ten or more in 2019. McGowan's is the only active streak of the four.
Senior starting pitcher Carlos Lopez slid his way into the top-three in Braves history for career strikeouts, tossing four to jump into third with 207. He trails Darryl Jordan by only one for second and is 13 short of standing alone as Alcorn's strikeout king.
After a 1-2-3 top half, the Braves' season-long first inning woes reared its ugly head yet again. The boys from Lorman have now been outscored in the beginning frame 34-14 over 24 games as JSU dropped a three-spot in the first to claim a 3-0 upper-hand.
The purple and gold struck back with authority in the second, as Cormier began the inning with a seeing-eye single before Rembert stepped up and kept his power surge in full-gear with a towering two-run dinger to cut it to one, 3-2 Tigers.
Jackson State and Alcorn traded blows in the bottom of the second and top of third, respectively as both sides put one on the board to keep the Braves deficit at one, 4-3 JSU. The Tigers saw its advantage grow to four in the third as the blue and gray used two hits and a Braves error to open the margin to 7-3.
Both sides went three-up three-down in the second before the Alcorn Braves pushed two more insurance runs across in the third on an error by the catcher to bump the advantage to 5-1 in favor of the visitors. The boys from Lorman were not done adding to its lead, when Fabre singled home Cormier to make it 6-1 going into the bottom of the fifth.
Disaster struck in the Tigers half of the fifth. After a pop-up and a weak groundout to second to get to two outs, ten Grambling hitters would reach base in a row, with six straight walks sprinkled in, to go from a five-run Braves lead to an 8-6 deficit.
Jenkins battled through a grueling six-pitch at-bat to start the fourth, before depositing a 3-2 pitch into the Jackson sky to cut the gap to 7-4 JSU.
Alcorn mustered only three more hits over the final five innings while Jackson State brought two more Tigers in to score as the Braves fell to 1-8 in the SWAC with a 9-4 defeat.
Starter Carlos Lopez (1-4) earned the loss, giving up seven runs (five earned) and three walks while throwing 112 pitches over 5.0 innings.
Alcorn baseball gets a chance for redemption tomorrow afternoon when the Braves and Tigers square off in game two at 3 p.m. from Braddy Field.
Quoting Alcorn head coach Bretton Richardson
Opening Statement
"It was a tale of two different games, early on we didn't make the routine plays defensively. Hence of all, we had the three errors on the board which led to them scoring some runs early on. We didn't swing the bats as well, that guy was coming out and challenging us with fastballs. We did okay but I felt like we should've done better and towards the end there we did the best we could to try and match-up with them, but it was a game where we felt like it was right there for us just one or two plays early on that you got to make. If we do that we'll have a chance."
On Carlos Lopez's Outing
"We've been working on a few things with him, we are going to get him ironed out. I can promise you by the end of the season he's going to be throwing the ball like he was last year. So the situation was his pitch count got a little high and we had to get him out of there and Rod [Roderick Hammond] came in and did a heck of a job, gave us an opportunity and held in there until the last inning. Overall, the pitching was okay, defensively we didn't do a whole lot to help those guys out."
On Stranding Ten Runners on Base Over The Final Six Innings
"What you try to do is try to get into a hitters' count and put a good swing on the baseball. A lot of times you can't dictate where the ball is going to go but if you put a good swing on it, more times than not, hopefully you'll have some good results. If we can continue to get guys on, I like our chances to be able to push some of those runs across but leaving ten runners on is a lot in one game. Looking at the flip side of it, we were fortunate to get ten guys on base."
On Kyle Jenkins and Brandon Rembert Both Hitting Home Runs
"The guy was challenging us with fastballs and we got some guys that feel like they can turn around a fastball a little bit but getting behind the eight-ball means we are fighting uphill. If we don't make those errors early on and spot them a three-four run lead, we have an opportunity where those home runs can really help us and propel us a little bit. We are swinging it okay and hopefully we'll come out tomorrow and we'll keep doing what we do."
#FearTheBrave
