After recording the hottest second half in the SEC this season, the Auburn Tigers played their way into the NCAA Tournament as a regional host for the second-straight season.
Unfortunately, the Tigers’ splendid run came to a screeching halt on Saturday afternoon. Behind four home runs and a strong outing on the mound, the Southern Miss Golden Eagles defeated Auburn, 7-2, to eliminate the hosts from the Auburn Regional at Plainsman Park.
Both teams found themselves in the loser’s bracket after dropping their opening-round games on Friday. Auburn tallied just four hits in Friday’s loss to Penn and hoped to revive the bats in an effort to stay alive. However, it would be Southern Miss that grabbed momentum early and would ride it until the final out.
With two runners on, and one out, Southern Miss’ Christopher Sargent crushed a home run to right field to put the Golden Eagles up, 3-0 before Auburn could grab a bat.
Dustin Dickerson would be responsible for the Golden Eagles’ next two runs, as he would hit home runs in back-to-back at-bats in the 3rd and 5th innings to give Southern Miss a comfortable 5-0 advantage. Rodrigo Montenegro hit a sacrifice fly in the 6th inning to extend Southern Miss’ lead to 6-0 before Auburn would strike.
In the bottom of the 6th inning, two singles by [autotag]Chris Stanfield[/autotag] and [autotag]Cooper McMurray[/autotag] would bring life back to the Auburn lineup and cut Southern Miss’ lead to 6-2. The Tigers would leave six runners on base in the final three innings but failed to send another run across to score.
Southern Miss’ dagger came in the 8th inning on a solo home run by Danny Lynch to bring the lead to 7-2.
“The responsibility lies on me,” Auburn coach [autotag]Butch Thompson[/autotag] said following Saturday’s loss. “Our team made a good run. This group put us in position after a really tough start and stayed in the fight the entire season to get us to this point to host a regional. We didn’t link it up enough in these two days to have success against two really good opponents.”
Eight batters recorded hits for Auburn in the game, with [autotag]Cole Foster[/autotag] being the lone Tiger to pick up two hits. Auburn would also fail to record a multi-base hit in its second consecutive game.
“We pride ourselves on getting timely hits the past month or so,” senior [autotag]Bryson Ware[/autotag] said. “The past few games, for whatever reason, it hasn’t been falling our way. Hats off to Southern Miss, they played a great game. I couldn’t be happier to be a part of this team.”
[autotag]Tommy Vail[/autotag] took the loss for Auburn. After becoming the team’s ace on the backend of the schedule, Vail ran into a stretch of bad luck on Saturday by allowing four earned runs on four hits while recording four strikeouts in 4.1 innings of work.
“He’s a fighter for us,” Thompson said of Vail. “We would not have been able to be here without Tommy Vail.”
In relief, [autotag]Konnor Copeland[/autotag] and [autotag]Chase Isbell[/autotag] worked 4.2 innings and allowed five hits and two runs. Isbell struck out four batters in his 3.2 innings of relief.
Auburn’s season ends with a 34-21-1 record. Southern Miss will face the loser of Penn/Samford on Sunday at 2 p.m. CT in another elimination game.
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