By Jason Pugh, Northwestern State Associate Athletic Director for External Relations; featured photo by Chris Reich, NSU Photographic Services
MONROE – When the Northwestern State baseball team plays cleanly, good things tend to happen.
When the Demons aren’t as clean in their execution, their margin for error shrinks.
In the ninth and 10th innings Tuesday night at Lou St. Amant Field, that margin for error disappeared as homestanding ULM tied the game with two ninth-inning runs before Henry Garcia Jr. singled home the game winner in the 10th to lift the Warhawks to a 6-5 victory.
“There’s nothing crazy about this one,” second-year head 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 (20-13) 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 (2-2) 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 (15-18) 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.
ULM reliever Josh Gregoire (1-1) retired the Demons in order in the 10th before Bryce Blaser’s one-out double set up Garcia’s walk-off single.
Northwestern struck first on Rocco Gump’s RBI infield single in the third before falling behind as ULM scored a pair in the fourth inning.
The Demons seemed to assume control as Daniel Burroway regained the lead with a first-pitch, two-run home run in the sixth and RBI singles from Reese Lipoma (3-for-5) and 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.”
The Demons and Warhawks play the second game of their two-game, home-and-home midweek series at 6 p.m. Wednesday in Natchitoches.
ULM 6, Northwestern State 5, 10 innings
NSU 001 002 020 0 – 5 11 3
ULM 000 200 012 1 – 6 9 0
W – Josh Gregoire (1-1). L – Bryce Leonard (2-2). 2B – NSU, Bryce Johnson, ULM, Isaiah Walker, Bryce Blaser 2. HR – NSU, Daniel Burroway (10). ULM, Walker 2 (3). Highlights: NSU, Reese Lipoma 3-5, RBI; Rocco Gump 2-4, 2 RBIs. ULM, Walker 3-5, 2B, 2 HRs, 2 RBIs; Blaser 2-5, 2 2Bs.
Records: Northwestern State 20-13; ULM 15-18.