Coach's biggest victories - Part 5
5/17/2011 4:00:00 PM | Baseball
GoBearkats.com will count down to Mark Johnson's retirement game with a weekly series of his five biggest wins for the Bearkats during his five-year tenure.
Today's Biggest Victory -
Sam Houston 12, Southern Mississippi 11
Oxford, Mississippi - June 4, 2007
By Tom Waddill, Huntsville Item Sports Editor
Three times Sunday, the Bearkats were down to their final out, and three times, Sam Houston State found some way to stave off elimination and beat Southern Mississippi 12-11 in 11 innings at the NCAA's Oxford Regional.
A 21-13 loss to the Ole Miss Rebels in the tournament finals hardly tarnishes what SHSU accomplished in its first regional trip since 1996. The Bearkats went 2-2 and outlasted a pair of higher-seeded teams, Southern Miss and Troy.
With their never-say-die spirit, the Bearkats (40-24) also earned the respect of thousands of rabid college baseball fans, a long way from home.
"We got here in the second inning of the first game and Sam Houston was behind 7-1. I thought they were whipped. I thought we were going to play Southern," Ole Miss fan Jeff Henry said as Rebels reliever Cody Satterwhite finally finished off the Bearkats, after they had pushed across three runs in the ninth. "They just kept battling, kept battling."
The Bearkats certainly did that the entire weekend.
On Sunday, the Bearkats fought like crazy just go get into the game with Southern Miss. Sam rallied for a total of six runs in the seventh and eighth innings to tie the game at 7. Then after Southern Miss took a two-run lead in the top of the ninth, the Bearkats simply refused to lose.
On a groundout by Todd Sebek and an RBI single from Heath Pugh, they scored two runs in the bottom of the ninth to knot the score again. After Southern Miss touched closer Luke Prihoda for a run in the top of the 10th, the Bearkats answered when reserve third baseman Aaron Cook delivered a clutch RBI hit.
They did it again in the 11th when Keith Stein sliced a single to right to score Jeremy Holzbach.
The Bearkats put a fitting cap on their thrilling victory when junior Bobby Verbick drilled a fly ball over Southern Miss center fielder Bo Davis to score Clint Mann with the winning run.
"We were playing like it was our last game, because it could have been," said SHSU center fielder Keith Stein, who had five hits with two RBIs in the win over the Golden Eagles. "We were giving everything we had and we kept chipping away, chipping away, chipping away. We kept getting clutch hit after clutch hit.
"It was amazing," added Stein, who went 11-for-17 in the tournament. "Everyone on the team contributed to that win."
After the loss to Ole Miss, none of the Bearkats appeared to be disappointed. Rather, they seemed thrilled by what they had accomplished.
A team with a new head coach, a bunch that had never been this far before, a squad that had never even reached the conference tournament, did exactly what Stein talked about after the Bearkats eliminated Troy on Saturday.
The Bearkats took every team's best punch and came back fighting.
"The emotion of this weekend, this was a new experience for all of us," Holzbach said. "I just hope this is something that this club gets to experience for years to come."
Tickets for Sam Houston's final home Southland series (May 19-21 vs. TAMUCC) are available on line now at www.gobearkats.com/tickets or at the SHSU athletic ticket office located in the Ron Mafrige Field House at Bowers Stadium. Ticket office hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. The ticket office telephone is (936) 294-1729.
Head coach Mark Johnson has announced his retirement at the end of the 2011 Sam Houston baseball season. Coach Johnson will make his final appearance at Don Sanders Stadium as the Bearkats' skipper during the A&M-Corpus Christi series May 19-21. Special pregame ceremonies honoring Coach Johnson's "Farewell Game" will take place on Friday at 6:30 p.m
