Southern Miss cruises past Evansville

The hits kept coming Sunday as the Southern Miss Golden Eagles danced to a 18-2 baseball victory over Evansville, earning their second straight series sweep.

The Golden Eagles only had two hits through the first four innings, but got six in a row and seven altogether in the fifth, leading to six runs, in breaking a 1-1 tie and soaring to a 7-1 lead.

Then in the sixth, Southern Miss had eight more hits to help score 11 runs, and led 18-1. The Golden Eagles had 18 hits for the game.

It was all a matter of approach, said junior college transfer Casey Maack, who struck out his first two at-bats before hitting a single and driving in a run in the fifth inning and singling in one run and tripling in two more in the sixth.

“He was throwing a lot of off-speed,” said Maack, who got his first start of the season. “He was eating our right-handers up. Lefties were the guys that had to get the innings going. He was tough to beat the first couple of innings.

“Top to bottom, even the guys on the bench, anybody can make an impact. It doesn’t matter who we have in the lineup. Anybody can hit. This is the most depth, Coach (Scott) Berry says, we’ve ever had, that I’ve ever seen. It’s fun to be on this team.”

Evansville (1-6) and Southern Miss (6-1) were tied 1-1 in the fifth inning before six straight singles — by Dylan Burdeaux, Mason Irby, Hunter Slater, Taylor Braley, Maack and Matt Wallner — along with another single by Cole Donaldson after two were out — put six runs on the board in the fifth inning for Southern Miss to make the score 7-1.

“We finally figured out their guy (Justin Hayden) on the mound,” Berry said. “He had pretty good stuff. He had a fastball and a slider that really ran and a change up that made that fastball even better.

“We were able to catch up with him and put some really good swings together. We executed a couple of hit-and-runs and ran the bases extremely well to put the pressure on them.”

Then in the sixth, Burdeaux led off with a home run over the scoreboard. Three walks, singles by Maack, Tracy Hadley, Bryant Bowen, Matthew Guidry and Irby, along with a two-run double by Braley and a two-run triple by Maack, scored 10 more runs to give the Eagles an 18-1 lead.

True freshman starting pitcher Cody Carroll fared better Sunday than he did a week ago, when he was roughed up by Northeastern. This time, Carroll gave up only one run, a first-inning home run by Evansville’s Trey Hair, although he was bailed out of jams by double plays in the third and fourth innings and by reliever Stevie Powers in the fifth.

“I commanded the zone a lot better than how I did last weekend,” Carroll said. “Before, I was a freshman with pre-game jitters. I just remembered to keep calm, take a deep breath, just let my pitching do the work.”

Colt Smith, J.C. Keys, Calder Mikell and Jake Davis also pitched for Southern Miss.

Powers (2-0) got the win.

“Stevie Powers gave us a huge stop out of the pen, just like we saw (Saturday) night with Nick Sandlin,” Berry said. “That’s going to be the key, how we get that contribution out of the bullpen. We saw it on back-to-back days.”

Maack and Braley each had three hits while Burdeaux, Irby and Matthew Guidry each had two.

Maack was still excited after the game.

“I found out right before BP. I was excited. I’ve been waiting for this. I’ve been ready. Nerves were obviously going. My first two at-bats were pretty shaky but I got it going and I’m really pumped to be in there.

“The nerves were getting to me. In the dugout, Coach (Chad) Caillet talked to me and told me to calm down, to stay within myself. The guy was throwing me change-ups down in the dirt and I was swinging at them. That at-bat (in the fifth inning) I took the first two, got a fastball down the middle. I did the job, I think, the rest of the day with the same approach.”

Burdeaux and Hunter Slater have at least one hit in all seven games.

Southern Miss will host Tulane at 6 p.m. Wednesday.

This story was originally published February 26, 2017 at 5:09 PM with the headline "Southern Miss cruises past Evansville."