Southern Miss drops series opener at Louisiana-Lafayette

LAFAYETTE, La. – No. 16 Louisiana-Lafayette scored a pair of runs early and three Ragin’ Cajuns pitchers kept Southern Miss in check with a 3-1 victory over the Golden Eagles in the debut of Russo Park Friday night.

The Golden Eagles dropped to 7-2, snapping a four-game winning streak. The Cajuns improved to 5-3 in school’s new ball park, Russo Park, despite still a few months away from completion, and posted the third largest crowd in school history of 5,250 witnessed the action.

It was Southern Miss, though, that jumped out to an early one-run lead as they plated their only tally in the second.

After back-to-back singles from Gulfport’s Daniel Keating and Matt Wallner, Storme Cooper drive in the squad’s lone run on a sacrifice fly to rightfield. Keating finished the night with two of the six Golden Eagle hits.

The lead remained short-lived at Steven Sensley opened the bottom of the frame with a solo homer and Kennon Fontenot added an RBI triple later in the frame to give the home squad the advantage.

The Cajuns added another run in the seventh on a bases-loaded hit by pitch to Brenn Conrad by reliever Stevie Powers.

Both starting pitchers gave each team a chance to win in the contest.

Golden Eagle starter Hayden Roberts (0-1) threw a career-best 6  1/3 innings and allowed all three runs (two earned) on five hits and four walks with five strikeouts to suffer the loss.

This story was originally published March 3, 2017 at 10:09 PM with the headline "Southern Miss drops series opener at Louisiana-Lafayette."