Southeastern Conference teams went 5-0 in early NCAA baseball tournament regional games Friday. The Big Ten, which tied its record with five teams in the national tournament, got off to an 0-3 start.
No. 4 national seed LSU erased an early 3-0 deficit to beat Texas Southern 15-7 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Kentucky won its NCAA opener for the first time since 1988, 6-4 over Ohio in Lexington. The Wildcats got a strong outing from SEC pitcher of the year Sean Hjelle, who allowed three runs or less for the eighth time in nine starts.
Vanderbilt, behind Will Toffey’s big day, beat St. John’s 13-4 in Clemson, South Carolina. Auburn won 7-4 over UCF in Tallahassee, Florida, and Texas A&M turned two hits, five walks and an error into five runs in the sixth inning on its way to an 8-5 win over Baylor in Houston.
Arkansas, Florida and Mississippi State played Friday night.
The Big Ten struggled. Michigan, the No. 3 seed in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, lost 10-6 to Florida Gulf Coast. Nebraska, the No. 2 seed in Corvallis, Oregon, got nothing going offensively in a 5-1 loss to Yale. Maryland, No. 3 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, gave up six home runs in a 9-1 loss to West Virginia.
Indiana and Iowa played late games.
GAME OF THE DAY
Missouri State 6, Oklahoma State 5, in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Jeremy Eierman’s second homer of the game was a two-run shot in the ninth for a walk-off win. Oklahoma State had taken a 5-4 lead in the top half on a wild pitch. With one man on and two outs in the bottom half, Eierman launched a 2-1 pitch from Trey Cobb far over the right-field fence.
UPSET OF THE DAY
Yale 5, Nebraska 1. The No. 3 regional seed Bulldogs, making their first appearance since 1992, got a complete game from Scott Politz. He allowed just six singles against the Big Ten regular-season champion Cornhuskers, and Andrew Herrera homered for the Bulldogs.
MARVELOUS ON MOUND
– Keegan Thompson of Auburn went eight innings to match his season high and allowed four hits and struck out nine against UCF.
– USF’s Phoenix Sanders pitched seven innings to equal his season high and gave up five hits and struck out seven in a 9-1 win over Bethune-Cookman in Gainesville, Florida.
– Yale’s Politz threw his seventh complete game of the season but only his second in a game that went nine innings. The Ivy League plays seven-inning doubleheaders.
BIG HITTERS
– Oklahoma State’s Garrett Benge hit for the cycle in the loss to Missouri State. He doubled in the first, homered in the fourth, singled in the seventh and tripled in the ninth.
– West Virginia, in the tournament for the first time since 1996, got two homers apiece from Jimmy Galusky and Kyle Davis.
– Toffey has been torrid since missing five games in May because of a shoulder injury. He went 4 for 5 with a double, home run and three RBIs against St. John’s. He’s 19 for 34 (.559) with four homers, 13 runs and 15 RBIs over his last seven games.
– Freshman Will Holland, who came in batting .210 out of the 9-hole for Auburn, doubled and hit a three-run homer against UCF. Holland homered for the third time this season and first time since March 17.
– Florida Gulf Coast’s Nick Rivera hit his 18th and 19th home runs of the season and drove in four runs against Michigan.
– Rob Calabrese hit a grand slam to give Illinois-Chicago a 6-1 lead over Southern Mississippi in the fifth, but the Golden Eagles came back to win 8-7.