ABILENE – ACU head baseball coach
Britt Bonneau was just looking to catch lightning in a bottle in the bottom of the ninth Sunday afternoon when he sent
Taylor Fajardo to the plate with the Wildcats trailing Sam Houston State, 2-0, and down to their last out.
He got much more than that when Fajardo drove a 2-0 fastball over the wall in left-centerfield to tie the game at 2-2, sending the game to extra innings.
Kyle Carroll, who only had six extra-base hits before Sunday's game, then carried that momentum into the bottom of the 10th when he got Ryan Brinley's first pitch of the inning in the air to left and watched the wind help carry it over the fence to give the Wildcats a 3-2 win over the Bearkats in the Southland Conference series finale between the teams at Crutcher Scott Field.
The win snaps ACU's eight-game losing streak and pushes the Wildcats to 9-28 overall and 7-11 in the Southland Conference. Sam Houston State, meanwhile, saw its eight-game winning streak come to an end as the Bearkats — who won the first two games of the series — fall to 22-20 and 13-8. ACU will be back in action Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. when it takes on No. 19 Texas Tech at Security Bank Ballpark in Midland. The ballpark is the home of the Midland Rockhounds, the Double-A affiliate of the Oakland Athletics.
For most of the game, it looked like the Wildcats would be on the disappointing end of another close game. Sam Houston State took a 1-0 lead in the fifth on a wind-blown solo home run by Hunter Courson, and then extended the lead to 2-0 in the seventh on a sacrifice fly by Spence Rahm.
That was all the Bearkats would get off ACU starting pitcher
Thomas Altimont, who put together his fourth quality start of the season. Altimont gave up just five hits and two runs while walking four and striking out five in 7 2/3 quality innings. He left the game after taking a line drive off the shin from the bat of Zach Smith, who was retired on the play when Altimont hustled / limped over the to the ball and flipped to first baseman
Tyler Eager as he fell to the ground.
Despite Altimont's solid work on the mound, it appeared as if it would go unrewarded as the Wildcats failed to mount much offense against Sam Houston State pitchers Sam Odom and Alex Bisacca. Odom started and limited ACU to four hits in six scoreless innings, and Bisacca followed and tossed two shutout innings with two strikeouts in 1 2/3 innings of work.
In the bottom of the ninth, Eager struck out to start the frame, and then
Jeff Clarke lined out to right field. But freshman outfielder
Marcelle Carter dumped a 1-0 pitch from Jordan Church into right-centerfield to set up Fajardo's heroics. The freshman from Las Vegas, Nev., watched the first two pitches from Church sail outside before he got a pitch he could handle. He tomahawked a high fastball high into the air, over the wall in left-centerfield for the Wildcats' first home run this season at Crutcher Scott Field.
When Fajardo touched the plate with the first home run of his collegiate career, he had tied the score 2-2.
"The real hero of this game is
Marcelle Carter," Bonneau said. "If he doesn't get on base with two outs in the ninth, Fajardo never gets a chance. He did a great job of fighting off a pitch and keeping us alive. You know, Taylor is a kid with great power, and he got a pitch he could handle and put a good swing on it."
Kevin Sheets then pitched a 1-2-3 top of the 10th — striking out a pair of Bearkats — sending the game to the bottom of the 10th inning with the game still tied, 2-2.
Carroll, however, needed just one pitch to untie the game and send the Wildcat faithful home happy as he lofted Brinley's first pitch into the air and watched the stiff wind blowing out to left drop it over the wall just about 5 feet fair for ACU's first walk off win on a home run since Kyle Conwell led off the bottom of the ninth with a home run to beat Eastern New Mexico, 5-4, on March 29, 2013.
The one-run win was a sweet one for the Wildcats, who were 2-10 in one-run games this season before Sunday's win and 3-16 in games decided by one or two runs.
"We had a great attitude in the dugout all day," Bonneau said. "To be able to come back and win that game like that is huge. We've had so many of those close games and it wears on you to keep losing them in the fashion that we've lost them. It's especially tough to have the right attitude on Sunday when you've lost the first two games of a series, but our guys had a great attitude today and we were finally able to get one to go our way."
