UL splits doubleheader

<! Cajuns come back big in second game while shortstop coach absent. > <blockquote><p align=justify>A couple of rallies came up short in the abbreviated first game, so Louisiana's Ragin' Cajuns left no doubt Wednesday night in the second half of a convoluted doubleheader at Moore Field.

Sam Houston State held on for the final 1 1/2 innings to finish up a 6-5 victory in the completion of a game suspended by darkness Feb. 16 in Huntsville, Texas. The Cajuns then took out the frustrations of that loss in a 14-5 crunching of the Bearkats in the regularly scheduled contest.

The odd twinbill split fit well into a strange Moore Field evening, one in which Cajun head coach Tony Robichaux spent the three-hour, 30-minute second game in the UL locker room. Robichaux and senior shortstop Micah Cockrell were serving a one-game, university-imposed suspension following their ejections from Sunday's contest against Arkansas-Little Rock.

"We were listening," Cockrell said after the pair listened to the nightcap broadcast.

What they heard was the Cajuns rapping out 15 hits and scoring three or more runs in three different innings, including a six-spot in the seventh that broke open a close game.

"That should really help us feel better about ourselves," said assistant coach John Szefc, who took charge of the club in the nightcap. "We hadn't hit it on Sunday and we loaded them up twice and didn't get it done in the first game, but we hit in the clutch a lot of times in the second game."

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Dan McDonald
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The Cajuns (39-10) entered Wednesday's opening continuation behind 6-4 in the eighth inning but promptly cut that lead in half on Jefferies Tatford's sacrifice fly in the top of the eighth. But a diving stop by Sam Houston shortstop Jose Salazar on Jonathan Lucroy's ground ball halted that threat.

Then, two hits and a walk went for naught in the ninth inning on John McCarthy's ground out that ended a 77-day, 56-minute contest. Robert Manuel, the Bearkats' pitcher when the game was suspended Feb. 16, pitched the last two innings for the save despite giving up three hits and two walks.

"We had our chances and didn't get it done," said Robichaux, who worked the abbreviated opener. "We talked before we went out about how we had to answer quickly, and we had runners everywhere."

The Cajuns had runners everywhere again in the second game, which began almost two hours after the suspended game's completion. The difference was those runners were scoring regularly - three in the second inning and three in the fourth before the six-run seventh broke it open.

"I'm glad for our guys," said Szefc. "With everything that was going on and us being in the middle of finals, they still came back and got it done in a lot of different ways."

Starter Jered Salazar (5-1) scattered seven hits and fanned five in five innings, with only two of the Bearkats' five runs earned. Relievers Thad Montgomery, Kraig Schambough and Ian Pecoraro allowed only one hit and faced two over the minimum during the final four innings.

"Our bullpen did a great job," said Szefc, whose last man-in-charge win at Moore Field came in the 2000 NCAA Regional while he was head coach at Marist. "We made a couple of errors behind Jered, but we had some guys in some different spots."

Tatford's sacrifice fly and RBI hits by Jameson Parker and Justin Merendino paced UL to a 3-0 lead in the second inning off Bearkat starter Matt Langwell, but Karl Krailo's two-run homer helped Sam Houston (18-28-2) rally with a three-run inning of its own in the fourth.

In the bottom of that inning, though, Josh Landry's two-run ground-rule double off reliever Duncan gave the Cajuns the lead for good. It also put Duncan (2-5) in the odd position of picking up both a win and a loss on the same day, since he got credit for the continuation-game win.

UL, which heads for Las Cruces, N.M., and a Sun Belt Conference series against New Mexico State beginning Friday, added single runs in the fifth and sixth innings before McCarthy and Tatford each had two-run doubles in the big seventh inning.

"I'll take timely hitting over just about anything," said Robichaux. "That's what wins games."
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