The Southern baseball team was riding high going into last weekend's series with Arkansas-Pine Bluff, but two late-game collapses have put the season in a new light.
The Jaguars had a chance to gain ground on Southwestern Athletic Conference rival Grambling but fell further behind after dropping two of three games to the Lions.
The losses were strikingly similar: Southern hits the ball well early, goes into a midgame slump and then the bullpen falters to turn two close games into routs. A 5-5 tie became a 17-8 loss on Saturday, and a 5-4 lead Sunday ended in an 11-6 defeat.
Southern (13-15, 7-3 SWAC) is tied for second with Texas Southern behind Grambling (9-2) in the West Division, with the head-to-head meeting with the G-Men coming this weekend.
The Jaguars have a chance to straighten out their issues with a pair of midweek games against Dillard on Tuesday and Incarnate Word on Wednesday. Both games start at 6 p.m. at Lee-Hines Stadium.
Besides some sloppy play Friday, coach Chris Crenshaw didn’t think there was any lack of focus after its April 1 win over LSU. One of his players agreed.
“I don’t think it hurt us,” shortstop KJ White said. “It showed how good we can play. This weekend showed us if we don’t play good, how bad it can look. You have to have perspective. We’ll keep working hard. We have great leaders. It’s all about executing.”
The Southern hitters have fallen into a habit of having early success but going cold midway through. Southern scored 27 runs against UAPB in the three-game series but only five came after the fourth inning
“We’re having too many bad at-bats with runners on base,” Crenshaw said. “In some cases, all we need to do is put the ball in play and we haven’t been able to.”
It was especially apparent Sunday. Southern stranded 14 runners and struck out nine times. The Jaguars scored one run in 4⅔ innings off UAPB reliever Jordan Jones, who entered the game with a 6.26 ERA. Southern outhit UAPB 14-13, and the deciding hit was a sampling of their frustration. Quincy Smith’s grounder to shortstop hit runner Tyeler Hawkins for the game’s final out.
The Southern pitching struggled as well. Genesis Prosper pitched a perfect inning Saturday after Drew Lasseigne allowed only three earned runs in six innings, but Propser fell apart after that. With the score tied at 5-5, he booted a bunt on which he had a chance to get the runner out at third, then uncorked a wild pitch to break the tie and start an avalanche of 12 runs over the next two innings.
Crenshaw said Prosper, a freshman from St. Augustine, let the chirping from the UAPB dugout get to him.
Sunday, it was Jerry Burkett who faltered. He threw two scoreless innings to save the LSU game but was wild against all five batters he faced Sunday, surrendering a grand slam to erase a 5-4 Southern lead.
“Jerry has got to be better than that,” Crenshaw said. “... If you look at how he was throwing the ball he had to not be focused. We’ll get it worked out.”
Southern has shown improvement at the plate but will need to get its pitching squared away and work harder at making contact with runners on base.
“We can use this for ammo,” White said. “There’s no time clock in baseball. We still have a long season ahead of us. Grambling next weekend and some big games this week. We have to keep on playing.”