LAKE CHARLES, La. – ACU ran into one of the Southland Conference's hottest pitchers Friday evening in southwest Louisiana, and the Wildcats were silenced by Kaleb Fontenot in a 3-0 loss to McNeese State at Cowboy Diamond.
The young Wildcats – who started four freshmen Friday one day after starting five freshmen in the series opener – have now lost six straight games to fall to to 9-13 overall and 2-6 in Southland Conference play. The Cowboys, meanwhile are 12-9 and 5-3 heading into Saturday's 1 p.m. series finale.
Fontenot (3-2) has now thrown back-to-back shutouts for the Cowboys, the first McNeese pitcher in three years to toss consecutive shutouts. He allowed just two hits and struck out 12 Wildcats en route to the complete-game victory.
All three McNeese State runs were unearned against hard-luck loser
Garrett deMeyere (2-3), who gave up just six hits in a complete-game eight-inning effort for ACU. The Cowboys scored an unearned run in the second inning to take an early 1-0 lead, and followed that with two more unearned runs in the third inning, and that was all of the scoring in a quick-moving game that only took 1 hour, 59 minutes to complete.
Fontenot set down nine straight Wildcats from the third inning to the seventh to help the Cowboys maintain their 3-0 advantage. However, he ran into a bit of trouble in the seventh when he gave up back-to-back one-out walks to
Russell Crippen and
Braxton Wilks. But
Alex Copeland struck out swinging and Dalton DeVries grounded out to end the threat.
Fontenot retired the Wildcats in order in the eighth and worked around a leadoff error by his third baseman in the top of the ninth to finish off the complete-game victory.
Kyle Carroll and
Mark Pearson had the only two hits for the Wildcats, both singles.
