HAMMOND, La. — The Sam Houston bats emerged for 12 hits, including three home runs, in a 7-4 win to eliminate No. 8 Lamar on Thursday morning at the 2021 Southland Conference Baseball Tournament, presented by GeoSurfaces.
Despite entering with just two long balls in his last 21 games, Cowser moved into sole possession of the league lead with his 15th home run in the home half of the first to give the Bearkats the lead. He is the first SHSU slugger to reach the 15-bomb plateau since 2000 (Kelly Eddlemon) and the third in program history.
After the Kats pushed the lead to 3-1 on a sac fly, the Cardinals responded with four unanswered courtesy of a Cole Girouard sac fly and Ben MacNaughton RBI single in the fifth, followed by a Ryan Snell run-scoring double in the sixth.
However, the needle flipped back over to SHSU with Jack Rogers’ moonshot tying the game at four-all and another solo shot from Easton Loyd in the seventh to take the lead. Loyd has recorded all three of his home runs in the last six games with a pair against Nicholls in the final series of the regular season and the one on Thursday.
SHSU padded the lead with a pair of runs in the eighth on a single up the middle off the bat of Anthony MacKenzie.
Lance Lusk (2-3) got the win with 3.1 innings of scoreless relief, allowing just one hit and one walk. Jack Dallas (2-3) suffered the loss after giving up four runs on nine hits in 4.2 innings out of the bullpen.
The Bearkats will face the loser between No. 1 Abilene Christian and No. 4 Texas A&M-Corpus Christi at 9 a.m. CT Friday.
