Rice Rallies Past No. 12 Southern Miss, 7-6

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Baseball

at Louisiana

Oct 11

1 PM

Baseball

vs McClennan JC

Oct 26

Noon

Reckling Park

April 1, 2018

Box Score

Box Score pdf

Recap by: John Sullivan, Rice Athletics (jsully@rice.edu)

HATTIESBURG, Miss. – The Rice baseball team rallied from a 6-2 deficit to record a 7-6 victory over No. 14 ranked Southern Miss Sunday afternoon on the road in Hattiesburg, Miss.

Down 6-2 to start the top of the eighth, Rice sent ten men to the plate on the way to scoring five runs to regain the lead 7-6. Rice loaded the stations with a single, walk and Southern Miss fielding error, and a Bradley Gneiting single with two-away plated one run to make it 6-3.

With the bases still loaded, however, the Owls were not quite finished. Luis Aviles was hit by a pitch and Ryan Chandler walked to force home two more runs and pull within one, 6-5. Freshman Trei Cruz followed with a bases-loaded single that drove in two to regain the lead, 7-6.

The Blue & Gray was back in front for the first time since the fifth inning, but there was still the task of getting heavy-hitting Southern Miss out six more times in a one-run game. Freshman Dane Acker had fired 2.1 shutout frames in relief in his first appearance in almost a month.

It was in fact Acker's birthday Sunday, and perhaps the best gift was to secure him his first collegiate win while turning the final 2.0 innings over to right-hander Jackson Parthasarathy. Parthasarathy was sensational retiring each of the six USM batters he faced, including three by strikeouts, for his first save of the season.

Rice is now 12-18 overall and 2-7 in conference. Southern Miss fell to 19-7 on the season and 6-2 in C-USA, just off the lead in the league standings.

The Owls played well most of the day to beat a nationally-ranked team for the third time this season. Rice in fact jumped on the scoreboard in the top of the first inning. Chandler hustled to beat out a throw from the left side of the infield for a leadoff hit. He then sprinted to third on a base hit to center by Cruz, and scored easily on Braden Comeaux' sacrifice fly for a 1-0 advantage.

The Owls added a run on a walk, a pair of hits and USM fielding error in the fourth. The Blue & Gray held the 2-0 lead when the Golden Eagles exploded for six runs in the bottom of the fifth. One run was already in when a costly Owl fielding error came back to haunt the team and keep the inning alive before the real damage – a grand slam home run by C-USA Preseason Player of the Year Matt Wallner.

Rice sophomore Addison Moss started on the mound and worked a total of 4.0 innings. The right-hander allowed just one earned run on two hits and two walks while striking out a career-high eight.

Rice has wrapped up the weekend road swing and returns to Reckling Park on April 3 to begin a four-game homestand. The Owls host longtime foe Sam Houston State on Tuesday night at Reckling Park. Start time is set for 6:30 pm. Rice then hosts a C-USA weekend series against Old Dominion April 6-8.

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