FIU Baseball Washed Down, Drop Two Games To Louisiana Tech

It felt like a lot was going wrong for FIU this weekend, including Mother Nature, as the Panthers dropped two games to the Louisiana Tech Bulldogs in Ruston.

A three-game series was reduced to just a pair of contests due to awful weather in Ruston. The Saturday matchup was delayed a full day, then rescheduled to Sunday for a doubleheader, but weather got in the way. As a result, the Sunday finale was dropped, and it likely won’t be made up before the season ends.

Game One

Game one was a back-and-forth affair between the Panthers and Bulldogs through the first three innings. Louisiana Tech struck first with a sac fly in the first inning, but FIU answered back with a pair of runs in the second. A wild pitch allowed Cole Cleveland to score while Kishon Frett worked a walk with the bases loaded to give the Panthers a 2-1 lead.

Easton Marks was reliable on the mound, going 5.2 innings while allowing two runs and striking out three batters. However, being a tie game in the bottom of the ninth, Juan Villarreal was not able to force extras as the Bulldogs hit a walk-off two-run homer to end the game by a score of 5-3.

Game Two

The second game of the series was even more disappointing, as a solid performance batting-wise was wasted. Ultimately, five runs were not enough as FIU’s pitchers gave up 13, including six in the eighth inning, which made a comeback impossible.

FIU opened up the scoreboard first with a home run by Frett – his tenth dinger of the season to center field. That was the only run scored by either team before the game was stopped and moved to the day after. The Panthers were only down 7-5 entering the bottom of the eighth. Regardless, FIU’s bullpen gave up 15 hits total.

With the pair of losses, the Panthers’ record is now 20-12 with a 4-4 record in conference play. That’ll head to Fort Meyers for a midweek matchup against FGCU on Tuesday, April 8th at 6pm.