Southern Miss soars past ULM with season-high 19 runs

Southern Miss Sports Information

MONROE, La. (WDAM) - Christopher Sargent and Matthew Etzel each homered twice, and both drove in six runs, to lead No. 25 Southern Miss to a 19-0 Sun Belt Conference victory Saturday evening over ULM at Lou St. Amant Field.

Behind a season-high for both runs and hits (18), the Golden Eagles (34-15 overall, 19-7 Sun Belt) won for a nation’s best 12th-straight time. Southern Miss scored in six different innings, with three or more runs coming in five of those frames.

The Golden Eagles tied a season-high with five home runs as Danny Lynch also added the last long ball in the game for the visitors.

Sargent put the Golden Eagles up with a three-run homer in the first and then the team added six more runs in the second.

Two lighting delays in the top of the second, though, slowed the game’s outcome. The first was an hour, 12 minutes after the Golden Eagles had a strikeout to open the frame. After the first delay, Etzel quickly hit a two-run homer before the game was delayed again after play lasted for three minutes and then shutdown for another 31 before restarting a third time.

When the game resumed, Sargent hit his second homer, a three-run shot, and Nick Monistere knocked in a run with a single to make the score 9-0. Sargent, who extended his hitting streak to a team-best 14 games, now has 12 homers on the year and 49 for his career, which puts hit one long ball behind Jeff Cook, who hit 50 homers from 2000-03 and is No. 3 on the school’s career home run listing.

Southern Miss added another three runs in the third. Etzel scored the first run when Sargent’s two-out grounder to short was thrown low allowing the runner to reach base. Lynch later followed with a two-run blast to right, his eighth of the year, to complete the inning’s scoring.

Up 12-0, Etzel collected a fourth-inning sacrifice fly before hitting a three-run shot in the sixth, his fifth, as the Golden Eagles upped its lead to 16-0.

Brady Faust finished the Golden Eagles’ scoring as he lined a Warhawk pitch to left with the bases loaded and cleared the bases in the process.

Billy Oldham limited the Warhawks (16-34, 5-20) to four hits and a walk with seven strikeouts over five innings to register the victory and improve to 6-2. Southern Miss also got scoreless innings from Luke Trahan, JB Middleton, Chandler Dawson and Colby Allen to record the team’s first shutout since beating UNO 12-0 on Feb. 21.

ULM starter Cam Barlow went 1 1/3 innings and gave up three runs on two hits with two walks and one strikeout to suffer the loss and fall to 3-6.

The Golden Eagles won their seventh of nine Sun Belt series with the Saturday victory and go for their fourth league sweep of the year Sunday. Game time is set for 1 p.m. and can be seen on ESPN+ and heard on an affiliate of the Southern Miss Sports Network.

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