ITTA BENA, Miss. – The Alcorn State University baseball program fought off a furious ninth-inning rally to take game two of the series and set up a pivotal rubber match tomorrow with a 7-6 win over MVSU.
Senior Kirt Cormier was phenomenal at the dish, going 3-for-5 with three RBIs and two runs scored to go along with two doubles on the day.
Junior Kyle Jenkins notched a three-RBI performance of his own, aided by a two-run homer (his team-leading sixth) and an RBI double.
Junior Brandon Rembert was only credited with one at-bat in the game but showed that patience truly is a virtue. The outfielder drew a career-high four walks, coming in to score on three of them.
Senior Bukhari Brown (3-5) pitched well enough to earn the victory, tossing 6.0 frames of three-run ball, while allowing three hits and whiffing six Delta Devils batters.
Junior Austin Atwood picked up his sixth save of the campaign (second-best in the SWAC), striking out the only batter he faced with the tying run 90 feet away and the winning run on first.
Alcorn jumped on the home side from the jump, getting an RBI double into the gap by Cormier and a two-run blast by Jenkins in the top of the first to give the Braves a 3-0 lead before most of the 127 fans in attendance could find their seats.
The visitors from Lorman continued to pound the baseball in the early going as an error on a Cormier single forced home Rembert and Jenkins came through in the clutch with an RBI double to left-center to up the lead to 5-0 Alcorn in the second.
Mississippi Valley State was able to break into the run column in the bottom of the second on a Chase Colding two-RBI dinger to close the gap to 5-2 Alcorn. Neither the Delta Devils nor the Braves could muster any offense until the bottom of the fifth when MVSU scratched across another run to shrink the deficit to 5-3 Braves.
After the two-run second inning, the purple and gold could only produce three hits and two walks as The Valley's pitching staff seemed to figure them out. With two outs and men on first and second in the top of the eighth, Kirt Cormier came through in the clutch, smacking a two-run double to the left-center fence and tacking on some key insurance runs to make it 7-3 Alcorn.
Junior Abdallah Salman, who came on in relief of starter Bukhari Brown in the seventh, produced two consecutive clean innings before running into some trouble in the ninth. Mississippi Valley State made the visitors dugout nervous as they scored three runs and had men on the corners with two away in the bottom of the ninth.
Head Coach Bretton Richardson made a call to the bullpen for his closer Austin Atwood and was rewarded with a swinging strikeout to end the ballgame, snapping a seven-game skid to division one competition with a nail-biting 7-6 triumph over the Delta Devils.
Alcorn baseball will take the field tomorrow afternoon at 1 p.m. for the rubber match with Mississippi Valley State at Magnolia Field.
Quoting Alcorn head coach Bretton Richardson
Opening Statement
"It had the feel of a [SWAC] Tournament game, we trying to get these teams ready for the tournament and these are the types of games you tend to play in tournament play so I told them 'every out, every at-bat, every pitch is going to be magnified'. If we can start doing that right now, once we get into tournament play, it will hopefully be something that we are accustomed to doing. It was a hard fought win today, Valley they didn't give up, we scored a couple runs there in the eighth inning to give us a four-run lead and we felt pretty good about ourselves but take your hats off to Coach Stevens' group, they kept fighting but unfortunately we were a little bit better than they were today."
On Kirt Cormier's Season / Outing
"Kirt has definitely been a mainstay in our lineup, he's hit right around that three/four/five area for us all season long so he's a guy that's pretty experienced and has played a lot of baseball and someone that we rely on pretty heavily. Once we get Travaris Cole back, I'll match our three/four/five/six hitters against anyone in the conference, I have that much confidence and faith in those guys. When they swinging the bats well if we can get the guys on in front of them, we should be able to score a few runs."
On Bukhari Brown's Outing
"Especially with the wind blowing out, anytime you have that amount of traffic on the bases with the walks and the hit batters it can spell trouble for you but the key to him today was that he only allowed those three hits. By allowing the three hits, he was able to get away today with being able to have the walks and hit batters that he had today but he persevered. He didn't have his good stuff today but he found a way to win and that's the most important thing."
On Abdallah Salman's Outing
"Unfortunately for him, some of the balls that they hit, they didn't hit them hard they just found the right spot so he was a little frustrated with that but that's baseball. You don't always have to hit the ball hard, you just have to hit it where they not. Valley was able to do that and made it interesting at the end but good thing that we had Austin [Atwood] as he came in and closed the door for us."
#FearTheBrave
