TROY, Ala. – The Georgia Southern baseball team fell 15-7 to open a Sun Belt Conference series opener against the Troy Trojans on Friday night at Riddle-Pace Field.
Troy (32-15, 12-10 SBC) jumped on Georgia Southern (23-22, 13-9 SBC) in the bottom of the first inning with a pair of singles, the first scoring two Trojans and the latter scoring another one. Troy would add to its lead with a pair of home runs in the bottom of the third, the first a solo-shot to left field and the second a grand slam to left-center field, taking an 8-0 lead over the Eagles. Troy knocked a two-run shot in the bottom of the fourth inning to stretch the lead to 10-0 before the Eagles would respond.
A two-run bomb by JD Kaiser over the 27-foot wall would get the Eagles on the board in the top of the fifth inning and plate both Kaiser and JP Tighe and cut into the Trojan lead, 10-2. Troy would get a run back via a wild pitch in the home half of the same inning. In the top of the sixth inning, Noah Ledford's RBI-double down the right field line brought home Jarrett Brown to dig into the lead, but an RBI-single by Troy in the bottom of the sixth inning brought the lead up to 12-4.
In the top of the seventh inning, Georgia Southern started to claw back from the eight-run deficit, starting with a Jesse Sherrill bases-loaded bunt to third base that scored Tighe. That was followed by a Brown bases-loaded walk, bringing Kaiser home. Ledford and Dowdell both scored runners with RBI-groundouts, ending the inning with a 12-7 deficit. The Trojans got three back in the bottom of the eighth inning to seal the eventual 15-7 final.
