JACKSON, Miss. - The Millsaps baseball team dropped thier first home game of the season today with a 3-2 loss to Huntingdon College.
The Majors (11-5) stranded six base runners in their final two at-bats today, allowing two ninth inning errors to cost them their 12th win of the year. Huntingdon starter John Rice held the Majors scoreless through six innings. The Majors' only hit in those first innings came in the fourth when Will Hawkins got a line through the right side gap to snap Rice's no-hitter.
With the Hawks (10-4) up 2-0 in the bottom of the seventh the Major offense finally began to chip away at Rice. Wes Perkins walked in the two spot to give the Majors a runner with one out. Jake Mills doubled and Trey Rountree walked to load the bases. Drew Leonard came to the plate after Ryan Remke poped up to center for the second out. Leonard reached on a fielding error by the shortstop, scoring Perkins and cutting the lead to one. Rice regrouped, however, and struck out his sixth Major of the day in Josh Ordeneaux to end the threat in his final full inning of work.
Three straight hits to lead off the eighth allowed the Majors to tie the score at two with no outs. Andrew Evans drove in Jules Roussel after Roussel's leadoff double. Wes Perkins laid down a clutch bunt to move Evans to second and Will Hawkins to third after Hawkins singled to left. But, two strikeouts from Ryan Harrison got the Hawks out of the jam with Hawkins sitting at third.
The game came down to the top of the ninth, tied 2-2, when a pair of errors allowed the Hawks to pull ahead for good. Josh Conlee struck Chad Baxley out to lead the inning, but an error by Trey Rountree at second allowed the go-ahead run to reach the bags. Miles Walding then sucessfully stole second and advanced to third on a wild pitch. Conlee got Stephen Bishop to strike out with Walding still on second, so as Drew Leonard hurried to get the inning-ending out with Keegan Lambeth's line drive to short the ball sailed high allowing Walding to waltz home for what would be the winning run.
The Majors gave up the unearned run with no hits in the inning and then went quietly in the ninth in four batters, stranding Josh Ordeneaux on second.
Millsaps will travel to Trinity University this weekend for a two-game series with the Tigers. The Majors and Tigers are currently tied atop the Western Division standings with identical 6-1 conference records. Game one, on Saturday, is slated for 1:00 p.m. James Hill will be in San Antonio broadcasting both games on GoMajors.com. Video link available here.
