Tulane University
Louisiana-Lafayette
Baseball Falls To UL-Lafayette In Regional Opener 6-3
May 31, 2002 | Baseball
May 31, 2002
BATON ROUGE, La. - Louisiana-Lafayette hurler Justin Gabriel threw a 109-pitch, complete game effort and the Ragin Cajuns gave the Green Wave a heavy dose of small ball as the Tulane University baseball team dropped a hard-fought 6-3 decision in the NCAA Baton Rouge Regional opener Friday evening at Alex Box Stadium.
Third baseman Anthony Giarratano, rightfielder Bryan Stelmack, second baseman Turner Brumby and shortstop Tommy Manzella each had two hits, and Manzella and Stelmack each hit home runs to lead the Green Wave offense, but it was not enough to overcome Gabriel's (10-4) performance from the mound, rightfiedler Corey Coles 3-for-4 showing at the plate and four bunt singles by the Cajuns.
With the loss, Tulane falls to 36-25 on the year and will have to fight through the loser's bracket to advance in the NCAA Tournament. The Green Wave will battle Southern on Saturday morning at 11, as the Jaguars dropped the day's first game to top-seeded LSU 5-4. The winner of the Tulane/Southern game will take on the loser of the 3 p.m. game which features LSU and UL-Lafayette at 7:30 p.m with the victor of that contest advancing to the championship game on Sunday at 1 p.m.
"I thought it was a heck of a good ballgame," head coach Rick Jones said. "You had two aces going against each other, and the game came out as billed. It was a game of inches, and tonight we came up short. I thought we swung the bats well enough to win, and defensively we played well enough to win. There were a couple of in-between balls that fell in, and we couldn't get anything to fall."
The Ragin' Cajuns opened the scoring in the second when Coles hit a line drive off the glove of a diving Manzella, stole second, went to third on a sacrifice bunt and came home on an RBI single by leftfielder Bryan Sneed.
Tulane answered in the top of the third on a solo homer by Manzella, but UL-Lafayette came right back in the home half of the frame when third baseman Dallas Morris belted a leadoff homer before Coles hit a singled up the left field line, stole a base and scored all the way from second on an error on Tulane starter Nick Bourgeois (10-3) to give the Ragin' Cajuns a 3-1 lead.
The Green Wave once again answered the Cajuns' scores, this time with a two-run homer by Stelmack in the fourth, but that would be all Gabriel would allow as the senior southpaw gave up just two hits and five baserunners the rest of the way.
UL-Lafayette took the lead for good in the fifth when the first four batters the Cajuns sent to the plate got base hits, including a run-scoring base knock by designated hitter Brad Saloom to score Coles from second to make it 4-3.
Bourgeois only gave up a single in the sixth and retired the side in order in the seventh, but after giving up a single to lead off the eighth, he was replaced by Joey Charron. From there, the Cajuns were able to drop down a pair of bunt singles and a squeeze-play sacrifice bunt to plate a pair of runs to account for the final score.
