The Northwestern State baseball team, stinging from losing a ninth-inning lead in an extra-inning loss Tuesday at Monroe, hopes its big homefield advantage is a factor this evening as the Demons and ULM’s Warhawks play the second game of their two-game, home-and-home midweek series at 6 p.m. in Brown-Stroud Field.
NSU (20-13) has lost only one game at home this season. The Demons seemed primed to score a road win Tuesday afternoon before ULM (15-18) rallied for two runs in the bottom of the ninth and got the game-winner an inning later in a 6-5 triumph at Lou St. Amant Field.
Henry Garcia Jr. singled home the decider in the 10th after Northwestern couldn’t slam the door in the ninth after missing opportunities to have a bigger lead.
“There’s nothing crazy about this one,” second-year Demons’ coach Chris Bertrand said. “It’s just we didn’t play well enough to win. We had opportunities in all three phases of the game to win the ball game, extend the ball game or put the ball game away, and we let all of those opportunities get away from us.”
The Demons left 12 runners on base and struck out 14 times against five ULM pitchers but led the game 5-3 entering the ninth inning.
After Bryce Leonard retired the first batter of the ninth, a four-pitch walk ensured the tying run would be at the plate for the remainder of the inning. ULM took advantage as a Jake Haggard single was compounded by a fielding error that put runners at second and third with one out.
Leonard induced a run-scoring groundout from pinch hitter Colby Lunsford that advanced the tying run to second before Major Brignon sent a liner to right field that Brooks Leonard could not hold onto while attempting a sliding catch, tying the game.
The Demons went down in order in the top of the 10th before Bryce Blaser’s one-out double set up Garcia’s walk-off single.
The Demons had seemed to assume control as Daniel Burroway rapped a first-pitch, two-run home run in the sixth and RBI singles from Reese Lipoma (3-for-5) and Rocco Gump (2-for-4) built a three-run, eighth-inning lead.
The advantage could have been larger, but Northwestern left the bases loaded in the seventh and eighth innings, part of a night in which the Demons saw seven runners stranded in scoring position.
“We played well enough to be in the fight of an extra-inning ball game,” Bertrand said. “We just didn’t play well enough to win. We had at-bats with runners in scoring position in the early and the middle part of the game that weren’t the type of at-bats we need to have. We had some very inopportune walks and lack of pitch execution, and we had some very big defensive miscues.
“It remains that, when we play a clean brand of baseball from an execution standpoint, the Demons have a really good team, but it continues to be that our failure are self-inflicted wounds, and we’ve got to find a way to clean that up.”