HUNTSVILLE – The Sam Houston Bearkats celebrated Senior Day in style on Saturday afternoon, closing out a weekend sweep of Jax State with a 6-2 win at Don Sanders Stadium in the finale of the regular season.
With the field of next week's CUSA Tournament already set, including the Bearkats (33-22, 13-11 CUSA) as the No. 4 seed, Sam Houston took full advantage to get nearly the entire available roster into the game. That included six pitchers, none of whom went more than 2.0 innings on the mound.
Marshall Wales got the start on Senior Day and tossed the first two frames before Logan Hewitt took over in the third, firing up a pair of perfect innings with three strikeouts to earn his second win of the year. Ryan Peterson also got in 2.0 innings and Gavi Coldiron, Rome Shubert and Chandler David all had single scoreless innings.
Offensively, freshman Blake Brown picked up his first career 4-hit game, pacing a 15-hit Bearkat attack against Gamecock (18-34, 5-19 CUSA) starter Will Baker, who fell to 3-6 with the loss. Jeffrey David and Easton Loyd celebrated Senior Day with 3-hit games of their own, including Loyd connecting on his first longball of the season.
The Kats fell behind early on an RBI double by JSU's Bear Madliak in the first inning, but got the run back on an RBI single by Easton Loyd in the bottom of the second. Jace Martinez followed Loyd's single with an RBI base hit of his own two batters later, putting the Kats ahead 2-1 through two frames.
Logan Hewitt threw up a pair of zeros in the third and fourth innings before the Kats showed off the power, tacking on three more runs on a solo homer from Loyd and a 2-run blast by Brady Christensen in the bottom of the fourth, upping the lead to 5-1.
Jax State got a run back in the fifth, but it was answered by an RBI single by David in the seventh.
UP NEXT
The Kats will now move on to the CUSA Tournament next week in Ruston, La.
The tournament will begin on Wednesday with the Kats as the No. 4 seed, taking on No. 5 Liberty in the opening round at 7:30 p.m.
They will be paired with No. 8 Middle Tennessee and No. 1 Louisiana Tech in the double-elimination portion of the bracket.
Each game of the CUSA Tournament can be heard on the Bearkat Sports Network with Carlos Zimmermann on the call. Additionally, each game leading up to the championship will be streamed and available to watch on ESPN+.
The title game of the CUSA Tournament will be aired live on the CBS Sports Network.
POSTGAME NOTES
- Jeffrey David had three hits in the game, extending his hit streak to 26 games. That streak is the longest of the season by a Bearkat and tied with Chris Andreas' 26-gamer in 2010 as the second longest in a single season. Terry Pirtle's 34-game hit streak in 1987 stands as the program record.
- The win completed the sixth weekend sweep of the season for Sam Houston, the most since the Kats had six weekend sweeps during the 2018 season.
