SUGAR LAND – The Sam Houston State baseball team was pushed to the brink on Saturday. As it turns out, that does not seem to be a spot they mind too much.
The top-seeded Bearkats rebounded from a shutout loss against Stephen F. Austin, to pound the Lumberjacks 30 minutes later in a semifinals elimination rematch, 8-2, advancing to the Southland Conference Tournament championship game for the second consecutive year and seventh time overall.
The Kats (40-20) will face Southeastern Louisiana, an opponent that was not on the regular-season schedule and ended up finishing as the second seed, two games behind Sam Houston. The game is scheduled for 12 p.m. on Sunday from Sugar Land's Constellation Field.
Sam Houston starter Heath Donica (10-3), coming off two days' rest, carried a no-hitter into the ninth inning before it was broken up with no outs on a 1-0 pitch that landed just out of the reach of diving right fielder Riley McKnight. The ball ended up in McKnight's glove but was ruled it bounced first.
“Twenty years of doing this, I don't think I know that I've ever seen an effort that heroic as Heath Donica just put on,” second-year head coach Matt Deggs said. “He put us on his back and got us to the championship game. He got us to 40 wins. He got his [10th] win of the year. He's been gigantic.”
After tallying just four hits in the day's opening game, Sam Houston matched the total in the first inning of the second matchup, jumping out to a 3-0 lead. Zach Smith, who finished 3 for 5 with two RBIs, sent a run-scoring double down the left field line to begin the scoring.
“We just knew that it was an elimination game,” Smith said. “If we don't win this, we got a shot of going home for the rest of the season. We've worked too hard. One of our goals was 40 to wins, and we were one away, so we came out swinging.”
Hunter Hearn also added an RBI groundout, plating Bryce Johnson, who reached on his 86th single this season. With the leadoff single, Johnson moved into sole possession of seventh place for hits in a season by a Bearkat player.
Andrew Fregia tallied the final run of the frame, sending a 0-2 pitch through the left side. Two innings later, Lance Miles belted his first home run this season, a leadoff shot to left field, upping the Sam Houston advantage to 4-0. The redshirt junior matched season highs with three hits and as many RBIs.
Despite sputtering offensively in the opener, through its first four games of the Southland Tournament, the Bearkats are hitting .305 as a team. Saturday's show, however, belonged to Donica. The right-hander set a new season high with 10 strikeouts three days after holding the Lumberjacks (30-30) to two runs while fanning eight in the tournament opener.
“When we got the back in the dugout after the first game, coach Deggs looked at me and said, 'do you want the ball?', and I said 'yes sir,'” Donica said. “He said, 'you got it. Go get him.' And that's just a really good feeling to know that he trusts me to come out there for our guys. I'm going to go out there and work my butt off for these guys every single day.”
Sam Houston tacked on another run in the fifth courtesy of an RBI single from Smith before exploding for three more in the sixth. In the frame, the Kats sent seven hitters to the plate and were the benefactors of three straight hit by pitches from SFA pitching.
Lance Miles provided the final damage, lining a bases-loaded, 1-1 pitch to right field, scoring Bryce Johnson (hit by pitch) and Taylor Beene (hit by pitch) to make the score 8-0.
“It's bigger than baseball,” Miles said. “In life you're going to get knocked down, hit back, some unexpected things are going to happen, and your back is going to be against the wall. Like coach Deggs said, this was good for us to see what we're made of. I think we did exactly what everybody in that dugout thought we were going to do – we came out stronger and better than we looked in a long time.”
The Kats pounded Stephen F. Austin for 10 hits, recording hits off five of six Lumberjacks' pitchers, including starter Tyler Starks (3-3), who was saddled with loss after tossing three innings, permitting five hits and four runs while walking one and fanning three.
Sunday's championship game against Southeastern Louisiana will mark the first meeting between the squads since April 25-27, 2014, a series the Bearkats swept at Don Sanders Stadium. It will be the first matchup in the league tournament since May 22, 2014.
"There's a lot of implications on the line,” Deggs said. “There's no guarantee that two teams are going to a (NCAA) regional. I think we're a regional team. I think Southeastern is a regional team. I think both of us making sure we get in the championship game tomorrow together helps both of our cases, but somebody has to win that game tomorrow, and that's what we're going out to do."
