LORMAN, Miss. – Just over ten years ago on May 21, 2011, the Alcorn State University baseball program won its first and only championship in program history, defeating SWAC powerhouse Southern University by a score of 12-6 in Shreveport, Louisiana.
The Braves who finished the season at 27-30, two wins shy of the school record, were utterly dominant during the season as they compiled a 19-4 mark in conference play including an undefeated run to the title in the SWAC Tournament by knocking off Texas Southern twice, Grambling State and Southern before falling to Rice (14-2) and California (10-6) during the Houston Regional at Reckling Park.
The Purple and Gold won seven of its eight SWAC series' on the campaign with five sweeps. At one point, Alcorn strung together an impressive ten-game winning streak from April 15 to May 1, going unblemished versus Jackson State (3), Alabama A&M (3), Alabama State (3) and Southern (1). Outside of conference, Alcorn won a series against Illinois-Springfield, split a brief two-game stint with Bethune-Cookman and battled a gauntlet of baseball blue bloods like LSU, Rice, California, Arizona, and Alabama.
The roster was completely loaded from top-to-bottom and managed by Barret Rey, who is second on the program's all-time wins list with 115 and has the highest average win total per season among the team's six head coaches at 19.2 victories a year over his eight-year tenure.
Looking at the program's history, the entire lineup from the leadoff hitter through the nine-hole was made up of players that currently have their names etched into the school record book while two student-athletes on the pitching staff make an appearance as well. This doesn't even include former Braves Assistant Coach Ryan Fuentes, who served as the team's pitching coach from 2019-2020 and was a freshman hurler on the 2011 club where he notched three wins and a save.
As a team, the 2011 squad is immortalized for coaxing the most walks in a single season, drawing 249 over 57 contests for an average of 4.4 walks a night to rank top-45 in the NCAA.
The Baseball Braves were one of the fastest teams in the nation that season, finishing the year third for both total steals (134) and steals per game (2.35) while scoring at a clip of 6.3 runs a contest.
The heart of the order deployed possibly the best hitter in school history with Eduardo Gonzalez providing the big bat. Gonzalez is the Braves' all-time career leader in hits (294), RBIs (195), runs scored (168) and doubles (73) while placing third for home runs (21) and top-20 for batting average (.356). In 2011 alone, the first baseman recorded the most doubles (24) and second-most hits (75) in a single campaign while hitting .344.
Kilby Perdomo was a power hitting machine with the fourth-highest double count (18) and fifth-best long ball total (10) in a year while 29 of his 66 hits (44%) went for extra bases. Perdomo ended his Alcorn career fifth in home runs (20), tenth for RBIs (103) and among the university's top-20 players regarding hits (138) and runs scored (109). He did all this while only spending two seasons on "The Reservation".
Brandon Hollins provided the wheels for the Purple and Gold, stealing 38 bases (third all-time for a single season) while reaching base 80 times, coming in fourth nationwide in the steals category. He currently sits at seventh on the career stolen bases list with 56 and snuck into the 100-hit club at 101.
The rotation was anchored by Steve Easter who claim the sixth-most strikeouts (77) and wins (8) for a single season during that miraculous run. He tossed five complete games (top-20 in NCAA) with a 4.82 ERA over 112.0 innings pitched while allowing only 24 walks. Easter was the program's all-time strikeout leader for seven years with 219 whiffs before Carlos Lopez topped him in 2019 and he's still fifth for career wins at 19.
Other notable members of that historic ballclub that are among the career leaders include Troy Williams (tenth in pitching wins), Kenneth Rowan (top-ten for runs, doubles, RBIs and steals), Joshua Powell (fifth in hits), Rodney Warren (third in hits and homers, fourth for RBIs), Josh Brumfield (eighth in runs scored) plus two other players that are a part of the 50-member 100-hit club (Angel Rosa and Alvin Jackson).
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