Speaker 1: Ragion Cagen's baseball is dominated in their regional opener against Cincinnati.
Let's recap it here on Raging Rundownty. What's good, ladies
and gentlemen, and welcome into another episode here on Rage
and Rundown, the show where you will know all things
UL sports. I'm your guy, JaMarcus Fitzpatrick, but you know
you can always call me fits. And on tonight's episode,
we will be recapping Louisiana Baseball's twelve to two loss
against the Cincinnati Bearcats in a game in the Starkville Regional.
That was the opener for them, and it was a
lot of excitement. Fans showed up and they were in
for a treat. Early on, it looked like UL was
really gonna make some noise, but then quickly Cincinnati flipped
the momentum on its head, took over the game and
never looked back. So, as we always do, we'll go
through game flow, we'll talk about the game, We'll talk
about Cincinnati's Jack Natilli.
Speaker 2: I think I'm pronouncing his name correctly, just the.
Speaker 1: Phenomenal night that he had at the plate, the way
that he was able to set the table for them
for the rest of the night, and we'll hear from
heady coach mad Dix and also first baseman Liamede from postgame,
the postgame press conference. I was not able to physically
be in there because I was doing my day job
with KTC doing a live shot on TV. By the
time we were done tearing everything down, they were already
going loaded the buses up, all those things like that.
I'll play out the postgame press conference in its entirety
on the show here. You'll hear that just in a
little bit. So coming into this game, Louisiana re entered
the top twenty five as the twenty fifth ranked team
in the country according to d one Baseball. Cincinnati was
number twenty four, so we were in for a top
twenty five matchup that was projected to be a treat.
We knew that Cincinnati could hit the baseball really, really well,
and they proved it. We knew that Louisiana baseball could
pitch really well, and they proved it early on. To
start things off in the first inning, Louisiana would be
up first to bat and Liamede. After Noah Lewis would
be walked, Liamede would single to write and that would
allow Noah Lewis to eventually come around after a fielding
era happens in the outfield b Noah Lewis comes in,
Liamede comes all the way around to third base and
they score first.
Speaker 2: They go up one to nothing.
Speaker 1: And then after that there was a little bit of
a hiccup in the base running. I would say, Colate
Brown comes up to bat and it's a fielder's choice situation.
Liamede instantly takes off. He gets caught up in a
chase down and he's eventually tagged out. Colt Brown hits
the second, but Liamede would have been there at third base.
Speaker 2: He didn't need to take off in that instance.
Speaker 1: It's a little of a hiccup in a moment by
a veteran player that I know that they wish they
would have had back. Obviously, maybe one or two more
plays could have helped to make the difference. But still
Cincinnati hit six home runs, so maybe it wouldn't have.
So you get out of that inning, you're up one
to nothing. Cincinnati responds. They hit the first of home
runs in the second inning. The bottom of the second
inning is where Jack Natili would hit his first home
run of the night, a solo home run tied it
up at one apiece, and then after that you kind
of went cold offensively pretty much for the rest of
the night. The next run that you would score for
the Cajuns would be in the top of the seventh inning,
but from there Cincinnati would absolutely dominate. Cody Brash would
get to start for you on the bump, and he
had been as dominant as we've seen as a closer
and also as a starter, and this was really the
first time that he was kind of thumped around a
little bit as a player as a pitcher in this instance,
aadtimp to Cincinnati for figuring him out and then being
able to just continue to run away with things with
the ability that they were able to hit the home run.
So you get to the bottom of the fourth hitting
you get a home run, a two run jack that
makes it three to one. You get a triple that
makes it four to one, and then another two run
homer makes it six to one. So now you're in
a tough situation. You definitely need some momentum swing, but
you go ground out, strike out, strike out. In the
top of the fifth. They come back in the bottom
they homer. They go up seven to one. Natilly HiT's
a two run jack. They go up nine to one,
and after that, at some point Cody Brash would be
taken out after the first home run. In the bottom
of the fifth, your Carter comes in, he walks a batter,
he gets a strikeout, he gives up the two run homer.
He gets the ground out, and then a hit by
pitch and then a walk, and then J. R. Tillett
comes in. He eventually finishes the game out for you,
but the damage had been pretty much done at that
point altogether. So it would be nine to one. You
get to the top of the sixth, you go ground out,
pop out, you single, and you ground out again.
Speaker 2: They get an RBI single, they go up ten to one.
Then again in the.
Speaker 1: Top of the seventh, Black I mentioned that's where you
finally scored again. Maddix Mendino comes in, He pinch hits
and he scores an RBI on a single, driving in
Donovan LaSalle and made it ten to two, and that
would pretty much be the end of the game until
he would hit his third home run in the bottom
of the eighth, another two run jack for him.
Speaker 2: Three home runs on the night, and Louisiana loses this
game twelve to two. Like I said, you.
Speaker 1: Talk about power home run hitting, it gets no better
than what we saw on the night. Six home runs
and most of their hitting coming from the long ball.
Speaker 2: They had twelve hits. Excuse me, they have fourteen hits.
Speaker 1: They scored twelve runs, and they figured out the combination
of pitches that you were throwing. No matter who the
picture was, they figured it out quick enough before you
could get runs to support it. And behind it. I
constantly kind of keep up with runners being stranded and things,
little nuggets and moments like that. Louisiana did strand three
base runners in the contest. But I think even in
driving some of those guys in, if they continue to
hit those type of home runs, you still are going
to lose this game. Bottom line, they figured out what
your pitchers were bringing to the table and they were
able to just launch it out of the ballpark. So
you just have to figure out another combination of how
to get better pitches from your pitchers to make it
harder for those really talented batters and not allow them
to be able to find that sequence out and be
able to hit home runs. That's what it really comes
down to their decisive fourth hitting is really what made
the deal diference and what you only can hope because
based on what coach Day said, Andrew Herman threw a
lot during the Sundel Tournament, so we're going to see
ty Roman tomorrow. What you can only hope for is
that going forward you can get early enough run support.
Speaker 2: You got it to start off.
Speaker 1: You had a great spark, the dominate gets a single
and that error happens there in the outfield.
Speaker 2: Noah Lewis was quick enough to.
Speaker 1: Be able to come all the way around home and
lead out on his force as well and got you
there to third base.
Speaker 2: But you can't leave base runner stranded.
Speaker 1: You can't get caught up in the rundown in that
situation there in the first when you were there on
third base. Those little things like that is the difference
in what can keep this game being from twelve to
two to maybe a nine to five, eight to six
or anything like that.
Speaker 2: And who knows what could potentially happen from there.
Speaker 1: Like I said, you had some missed opportunities there leaving
base runner stranded, and that ultimately puts you in a
position where your pitch sure knew he had to be
absolutely perfect because the run support was not following in
behind that, and so it puts you in a tough situation.
So now it's time to hit from head coach mad Diggs.
I'm gonna take a quick time out. Before we do,
we'll hear from him and Liamede and its entirety. We'll
hear it all when we come back here on Raging Rundown. Hey, guys,
thank you so much for tuning into another episode of
Raging Rundown. We're gonna hear from head coach Matt Diggs
and first basement Liamede in just a second. But before
we do, please do me a favor if you're watching
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But most importantly, make sure you subscribe to the channel.
If you are listening, follow the podcast feed, rate the show,
and leave us a review because it's gonna help us
get in front of more Raging Cajun fans just like yourself. So,
as promised, head coach Matt Diggs and Liamede took to
the podium following the game, I'm gonna play the press
conference out in its entirety so you can hear the
questions and the answers that they gave. It's about six
and a half seven minutes in its entirety, So just
hang tight and listen to everything. We'll react to some
of it, talk about a lot of it. A lot
of it is just going to be recapping some of
them what I just talked about here in the first
half of the episode.
Speaker 2: So here's head coach Matt Diggs and Liamede.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was just a good old fashioned country butt
whooping right there. You know, sometimes you had a one shield,
sometimes you're a bug. Tonight we were the bug and
heck of a game for three and two thirds. Sometimes
you just got to tip your cap, though I haven't
seen anybody do that to Cody. With two outs on
what five six pitches, they go drag Bonooh, we'll get that.
So it's two quick outs the catcher, who played like
a big league all starter night for them, super impressed.
Doubles get two strikes on the next guy, you know,
and then we hang in. Fastball just started missing spots.
We were able to dominate with the fastball early and
they tax mistakes, man, and that's what good teams do.
They were very impressive tonight. I thought our guys battled
off a good starter, you know, they're guy's a good starter.
It's a good mix, and we battled hard. We had
a lot of hard contact tonight, but that's baseball, and
and couldn't find any holes with it. I thought we
were going to take the lead there in the happening
before they scored all those runs. You know, do we
tag and go to second or do we stay there
and leave the whole open for left hand? It's ballito,
you know, it's it's just hard to tell. So but
sometimes it comes down to little things like that, you know,
regaining the momentum. And but credit those guys, they they
were a force tonight. Uh, they didn't miss any mistakes
after the third inning. And very impressed with them. So
we'll we'll rest up tonight and get a chance to
play to more, get a chance to get to forty.
And it's one game at a time, you know, from
here on in. And but that was a good ball
club we faced tonight and uh, you know they got
after us.
Speaker 1: So start with that pleasure for players.
Speaker 4: Lead coach kind of hit on a good point there.
Speaker 5: It felt like early on you guys were finding some barrels,
but you just kind of had a case of the
Adam balls.
Speaker 2: When that's happening, are you still encouraged.
Speaker 5: By that and just thinking that things are gonna fall
for you tomorrow or is it frustrating thinking, man, I'm
hitting this thing with all my god and it's still
getting them out.
Speaker 6: Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, it
is pretty frustrating. But I mean you can't control it sometimes,
so you've got to try our best to just stealth
the results. Like if we're having a good at bat,
hit the ball hards that really we can do. All
you can do is just try to beat the pitcher
and then wherever you hit it, you hit it so
and it sucks when it's like end of the season
kind of like this in the postseason, you're hitting balls hard,
it's getting caught, but it's gotta flush it asquick as we
can and play. Give lips from the team tomorrow, just
keeps going in a while.
Speaker 4: What did you slee from their star Taylor?
Speaker 6: Just his ability to locate his all speed really well.
He didn't leave anything up for the most part, you
get thrown. To any account, his fastball is good enough
to get you. He gets you off balance. But yeah,
he's just really good at uh locating.
Speaker 4: I'd say, you guys have those two straight blocks in
the fourth inion and then there's a really good play
from center field on that double play. How difficult was
that as a momentum shift? And do you feel like
that was a.
Speaker 5: Huge turning point in the game, especially the tag that
was maybe an inch close.
Speaker 2: To I mean safe.
Speaker 6: Yeah, pretty big momentum shift. But I mean, yeah, we
gotta find a way to you know, just flush it.
I mean, stuff happens. I mean we're gonna be aggressive.
I mean, Drew's not trying to be done there. He's
trying to get the extra bag, you know, getting score position.
So I mean some stuff you gotta live with. Then
it just sucks because we did that. We had very
few opportunities with runnering the score position. So yeah, it
just comes down and just probably being a little smarter there.
But you know, there's something you can do about it.
And it just sucks because that anying they scored, that's
when they scored three or five or whatever it was.
So yeah, we just gonna be better at responding at
the end of the day. I think you've been here before.
Speaker 3: The whole psychology you lose the first game, your seasons scared.
Speaker 2: You know it's there and you're in the base. Just
talk about the mindset of going into Morsky.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean it's win or go home. Been here
a lot first two years of the same situation.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's just.
Speaker 6: It's just how long you want to keep playing together.
You know, at the end of the day, we gotta
play better. You know, that's really just that simple. I
think we're playing get and swinging it well. We can
beat anybody. So it's just gonna come down how long
we want to we want to play together. I mean,
coaches anything different pitching as the game two of a
normal weekend series to more.
Speaker 3: I know the consequences are different, but I think just
based on the amount of use that armand went through
last week, I'll start ty Roman tomorrow and uh we'll
take it from there.
Speaker 4: And emails players good though.
Speaker 1: It don't I see.
Speaker 5: You said, didn't they.
Speaker 1: Like a coach?
Speaker 2: Coach?
Speaker 5: You kind of mentioned that they were just kind of
scene out there, and you know it was it more
the way the part plays. Was it just you know,
cause we know Cincinnati knows how to match the the
baseball You talked about that earlier in the week. It
was it a combination of those things or what was it.
They just gave them the ability to be able to
just kind of.
Speaker 2: Launch the ball at night.
Speaker 3: Well, the first three innings we were beating them on
pretty much exclusively fastballs, and we were locating it in
and with two outs there in the fourth, we started
missing and they taxed it. They didn't miss it, and
then that energized them, and it gave them a ton
of momentum and it just started snowballing. And but they're
a good team, man, They're a good team, and you know,
so sometimes you just got to credit them. You can
talk about a base on a mistake. I mean, but
even let's just say he tags and makes it, what
happens still.
Speaker 2: Probably going to happen.
Speaker 3: And you know, but the tough part for us, I mean,
that's just a cardinal rule in our offense. Don't make
the second out at second with a runner in front
of you. And but that's not a game changer, that's
not one. This isn't one of those games where you go, well,
it came down to this because credit there guy eleven.
The starter he bent, but he didn't break. He wasn't
a shark, if I promise you as he could have
been the night, and he stayed out there and stayed
out there, and so you could tell he's a tough kid,
and he's he's a competitor, and he bent, he didn't break,
escaped a couple of jams. And credit those guys, man
tonight was there night and they took full advantage of it.
Speaker 2: Thank you, guys.
Speaker 1: So you heard Coach Digg's there, you heard Liamede. They
basically reiterated a lot of the things that I was
talking about. I did forget to mention that moment there
in the fourth inning, And like Coach Dick said, it
wasn't something that made or break the game, broke the game.
Donovan Lasal flies out the center, Drew Markle and Colate
Brown try to tag up and get to second and
third to get a scoring position. Cole Brown gets the third,
Drew Markle is tagged out. They challenge it, they don't
get it, and then after that the snowball happens there
in the bottom of that fourth inning. That's not a
moment that made a break, break broke this game at all,
but it is a moment that happened in there. That
obviously was a note in this one. But like Liamede said,
they're gonna have to flush this one. They're gonna have
to turn around and answer and try to play against
a Lipscomb team that played against Mississippi State.
Speaker 2: Earlier in the day.
Speaker 1: They lost that game ten to one. The first three innings,
it was kind of similar to the way Louisiana lost
as well. The first three innings it was scoreless by
both teams, and then in the bottom of the fourth,
very similar to the way Louisiana was, Mississippi State scores
three runs, they add another run in the sixth, and
then they have a huge seventh inning where they score
five runs. They win it ten to one. They get
ten hits and ten runs scored. Lipscomb had six hits
in this one, so their starting pitcher went six innings
and was pretty solid early on, but it eventually eventually
Mississippi State was able to figure them out. So win
to go home, go backsit against the wall. It's an
opportunity to be able to try to answer and figure
it out. Based on the way that lipskim throughout their
initial starting pitcher, we may see Jackson Lee coming out
as a five point eight three era, he's appeared in
sixteen games with three starts. It could be him potentially
with the number of innings that he's thrown in. He's
throwed in fifty four innings. Who knows what they.
Speaker 2: Might try to do.
Speaker 1: They may decide to mix and match it a different way.
As you heard Coach Digg said, and I think I
even mentioned it earlier in the episode, ty Rowman will
run out on the bump to start off because of
the amount of throws that Andrew Herman has thrown in.
Probably what coach Diggs is hoping for is that his
team can continue to rally enough to where maybe he
says him for that second game on Sunday or even
the final game on Monday, because that's what you're going
to have to do ultimately to win this regional now,
because you lost this first game, So Louisiana falls to
Cincinnati twelve to two to open regional play here in Starkville.
We will continue our coverage out here. You can watch
my report there on KTC dot com, and then you
can also tune in here on the Raging Rundown podcast
where we will be recapping the games every single night
all the way to the end, whether that is here
in Starkville or that is in Omaha at a College
World series, we will see what the Raging Cagens can
do for the remainder of this postseason. That's going to
wrap up this episode of Raging Rundown. If you've made
it to this point in the episode, thank you so much.
Please do me a favor. Like this video, share it
and leave a comment down below. But most importantly, make
sure you subscribe to the channel. If you're listening, follow
the podcast feed, rate the show, and leave us a review,
because that's going to help us get in front of
more Raging Cajun fans just like yourself.
Speaker 2: I'm your guys, jam Marcus Fitzpatrick. We'll see you guys
next time.