April 11, 2009

Box Score

HUNTSVILLE, Texas - Sam Houston State erased a two-run deficit with five runs in the fifth to claim an 8-5 win over Lamar for a Southland Conference series victory at Don Sanders Stadium Saturday afternoon.

Lamar drops to 23-13 overall and 10-8 in SLC play, moving into a tie for fifth place with Southeastern Louisiana. The Cardinals will travel to UTSA next weekend, but first will play a two-game non-conference series with arch-rival McNeese State. Tuesday's game will be in Beaumont and Wednesday's will be in Lake Charles, La. Both games will begin at 6:30 p.m.

Tyler Link and Chris Dunkin each collected two hits for Lamar. Dunkin was 2-for-4 with a single, double and a sacrifice fly with two RBIs. Anthony Moore concluded his hot weekend with a triple and was hit by a pitch. He hit .417 with a team-high six RBI and a 1.000 slugging pct.

Lamar played station-to-station ball for its first two runs, benefitted from a leadoff walk in both the third and fourth innings, moving the runners over via a sacrifice bunt and scoring on a sacrifice fly and a simple single for a 2-0 lead.

The score stayed that way through 5 ½ innings before Sam Houston scored five times in the sixth to take the lead for good. The Bearkats got a two-run single from Braeden Riley that made the score 3-2 SHSU.

An RBI double from Dunkin in the seventh made it 5-3 but the Cardinals stranded him at third and the Bearkats followed with a pair of two-out hits to score twice in the bottom of the seventh for a 7-3 lead.

Lamar plated a pair of runs with two outs of their own in the eighth but left two men in scoring position and couldn't get any closer than the 7-5 score at that point. Sam Houston added a run in their half of the eighth for the final margin.

Ricky Testa (3-3) took the loss after allowing three runs in 5.1 innings. Brent Powers (1-0) got the win for SHSU with seven strikeouts in seven innings. Will Skelton picked up his first save after working the final 1.1 innings with two strikeouts.