Houston Baptist Advances to Championship Game
Southland Conference
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SUGAR LAND, Texas
– No. 7 Houston Baptist shutout No. 6 Central Arkansas 1-0 Thursday afternoon at Constellation Field.
In their first Southland Conference tournament appearance, the Huskies will also be making their first championship game appearance making a 3-0 run in the tournament.
Houston Baptist right-handed senior Ross Kennell threw nine complete innings giving up four hits against 33 Central Arkansas batters to improve to 2-0 on the season.
In a win-or-go-home situation, Central Arkansas saw four hits and one walk while leaving six Bears on base throughout the game.
The lone run of the game came on an RBI single to right field from Houston Baptist senior Curtis Jones as Thomas Clay picked up a run to give the Huskies a 1-0 lead with two outs in the top of the sixth inning.
Central Arkansas freshman Ty Tice and senior Charles Deckard each picked up a hit, but Kennell and the Huskie defense shutout UCA.
The Huskies picked up six hits against right-hander freshman Tyler Gray including a 2-for-3 performance from Clay.
No. 7 Houston Baptist will play Saturday at 6 p.m. and will take on either No. 5 Sam Houston State or No. 8 Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.
Houston Baptist Coach Jared Moon
“You can’t ask for anything better than that. X (pitching coach Xavier Hernandez) and I talked last night about Ross’s (Kennell) offspeed stuff, throwing the breaking ball and the changeup for a strike, their plate discipline, it just matched up well for Ross and he did a great job of getting ahead of guys. Their freshman (Tyler Gray) did a great job keeping our guys off-balanced, we were chasing breaking balls quite a bit, our plate discipline kind of went downhill a little bit, but we were able to scratch one across when it counted. The play that Samm (Wiggins) made to get the guy out at second (to end the eight) was a huge, huge play, then the play Espinosa made up the middle, those are gamechangers and we were able to make those plays and see what happens tomorrow.”
“When TC (Thomas Clay) gets on, we’re usually going to score, bunting him over or stealings, and we were fortunate he got the double and (Curtis) Jones came up with the big hit. Hopefully, he comes up big pitching tomorrow and some more big hits.”
“We’ve been watching Sam and Corpus throughout the tournament. Obviously, Sam’s hitters are pretty well disciplined, Jones had a pretty good outing against them. He had one bad inning, but was able to settle in after that and keep them off-balanced. We don’t know a lot about Corpus, they’ve been swinging it well and just came off a real high emotional game beating Southeastern. At this point, I’m not worried about who we’re playing, I’m just worried about how we play.”
Houston Baptist Senior Third Baseman Curtis Jones
“It means a lot to come up with another big hit. We had Ross (Kennell) on the mound and we were looking for him to go out and throw a bunch of strikes and work ahead in the count and he really battled out there and threw a heck of a game. I knew I was probably going to get some offspeed pitches, there was a runner in scoring position, an open base in front of me. I was looking for something up in the zone and got a good piece of metal on it.”
“It feels awesome (to get the start in the championship game), I’ve been waiting for it since day one. I’m just going to go out there, stay in the bottom of the zone, throw a lot of strikes and work a lot of outs.”
Central Arkansas Coach Allen Gum
Tyler Gray came out and threw strikes and had good stuff. He was throwing his breaking ball for a strike and we played good defense behind him. I thought he was outstanding, coming out in a big situation, a big moment... for a freshman to do that was outstanding."