STATESBORO - The Georgia Southern baseball team held on to defeat the Jacksonville Dolphins, 9-8, at J.I. Clements Stadium on Tuesday night. The Eagles snap a four game losing skid with the win and turn its attention to the final regular season series this weekend against JMU.
Georgia Southern (25-27) got to the pair of Jacksonville (30-22) pitchers early by scoring all nine runs in the bottom of the first inning. Noah Ledford's RBI-single started the scoring, as well as tied him with A.J. Wirnsberger for third-most RBI in a career with 218. Jarrett Brown followed that up with an RBI-double out to left center, and right after taking a 2-0 lead, the rain forced the game to pause for an hour and 12 minutes. Once action resumed at 7:30 p.m., Jonathan Jaime made the score 3-0 after an RBI-single to first base. A wild pitch would score Brown to make it 4-0, and a fielders choice by JD Kaiser that saw no one get tagged out would safely score Corey Dowdell. After a Dolphin pitching change, Jesse Sherrill was hit with the bases loaded to score Jaime, and a bases clearing double by Blake Evans would score Sherrill, JP Tighe, and Kaiser to take the 9-0 lead over the Dolphins.
The score would remain at 9-0 until the tp of the sixth inning, where the Dolphins would get two unearned runs to cut the lead to 9-3. In the top of the seventh inning, a solo homer would add one more run, and a wild pitch in the top of the eighth inning would make it 9-4. In the top of the ninth inning, Jacksonville would load the bases with no one out and a grand slam by Tommy Joseph would cut the lead to one. The next batter walked and reached third on a wild pitch and sac bunt, but Jay Thompson would get the next batter to strike out swining and make the final batter line out to strand the tying run at third and win the game for the Eagles.
Zachary Harris earned his second win of his career in the win.