MOBILE, Ala. - Â South Alabama, led by Gant Starling's pitching and the offense all around, stayed ahead of James Madison, 10-7, to clinch the series.
A home run in the first set up the Dukes with an early two-run lead, adding another with a leadoff solo homer in the third. The Jags responded accordingly with a five-hit, four run third to retake the lead. A solo shot from Tyler Borges in the fourth gave another to the Jags, before JMU tied it up in the top of the fifth inning. After Jaxon Shineflew gave USA 2.2 innings with a career-high five strikeouts, Starling entered in the fifth to shut down the Dukes. The tie was short-lived as the Jaguar bats scored another three with two RBI singles and a fielders' choice with bases loaded to make it an 8-5 ballgame.
The two sides traded runs in the sixth with a sac fly for JMU and a solo home run by Will Turner. An RBI single by Rett Johnson gave one more to the Jags in the seventh, making it 10-6, as Starling continued his dominance on the mound. He finished with 5.0 innings, four strikeouts, four hits, and no earned runs. A wild pitch allowed a run for JMU in the top of the ninth, but Starling worked out of the jam to add another win to his record.
Winning Pitcher: Gant Starling (5-1)
Losing Pitcher: Max Khule (3-4)
QUOTES
Head Coach Mark Calvi
On what makes Starling so versatile and the pitching staff in general: Yeah, his toughness, you know, and he's up to 96-97(mph) today, on a hot day. He threw 70 pitches and he didn't drop down below 93. He was at 93-96, his slider was nasty. It's just his toughness. We've got four or five leverage guys in the bullpen, (Logan) Wash, (John) Gillis, (Grant) Wood, guys that; Mitch (Heer), you can go down the list. We've got some guys that have some thick skin as the year has gone along. They know their role, and they know exactly what they need to do. Gant is one of those guys. Now we extended him a little bit. Two and a third was the longest we've used him, maybe last weekend. But our pitching has been great. Our pitching yesterday got a little bit sideways, but that was a tough day to pitch. Now both teams played in the same conditions, but they're a little more right handed, stronger, more physical, get it up in the air and pound one out, that's not our game. The last thing I wanted to see was the wind blowing and getting in a slugging match with JMU on a Sunday. That's not a recipe for success; but I felt as though today came down to: how tough our guys were and how important winning is to them. I told them three weeks ago that every game, starting pitchers, yeah I know you want to work through jams and things of that nature, but we are playing it like it's an elimination game, every single game, because we've got some pitchers down in the pen that have that have shown me that I can manage that way. If you don't have guys you're a fool by just pulling guys out. But when you have some guys who are proven, like
Gant Starling, Wash (Tyler) Smith, (Eric) Lin, Wood, and a couple of other guys; when you have some guys who can hold it together, such as (Jaxon) Shineflew, you do what you've got to do to win the game. And that's what we did today. Did I want to go in the second inning and get Gillis? No, I didn't want to go get Gillis. He gave up a wind-aided homerun and he was pitching fine. He was competing; but sometimes you get a gut feel too, and my gut feel was my gut feel was we had to make a change and go to Shineflew. I felt as though he could pitch in on these guys and use his changeup and get us some outs and that's what he did. So, proud of our pitchers.Â
On the offense today: The wind was blowing out 25 to 30 miles an hour. We knew his (Todd Mozoki) fastball ran a lot. We knew he was 90-93 and we had to get him over the middle of the plate. When Holt struck out, I was kind of like, yeesh, but when Micah struck out I was like "This isn't good", because the kid's ball ran about 20+ inches. We're getting some quick outs, and I'm like, "We're gonna keep this kid around." I knew if we could wear him down, we could get him out of there in the third or the fourth. I knew that, but the ball was moving so much, we were getting some early outs. It didn't look good until Borges snuck that one up the middle, where we got him with some runners on, and then Lucas's big double, and that was huge. Lucas's (Ismaili) double was huge but the guys getting on in front of them was too. They say offense is contagious. I think when somebody's shutting you down, all it takes is one guy to have a great at bat. That's all it takes, andkind of the blueprint. We're like, okay, all right, we can get this guy and I think that was kind of the case today. You want to play from ahead, you don't want to trail like that with the wind blowing out and giving up a couple of home runs, but man, our guys just hung in there and, again our pitchers, I can't say enough about the job that they did. We have not played in conditions like this all year long. Maybe Nebraska where the wind was blowing 20 miles an hour. We've played in some windy conditions, but not like this since Nebraska; and Friday was terrible (at Nebraska), Saturday the wind was ok, and then Sunday it was calm. This weekend was like, bad, worse, and terrible on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. It was three really bad days, and I thought our guys pitched phenomenally well in adverse pitching conditions against a very talented offensive team.
UP NEXT
South Alabama will travel to Birmingham for a midweek contest at UAB on Wednesday, May 1 at 4 p.m. The game will be broadcast on Sports Talk 99.5 and ESPN+.
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