FROM CBB NEWS SOURCES

Parting is such sweet sorrow, even in baseball.

Scott Copeland made potentially his last start of the Pump Jacks’ inaugural season Saturday night and he made it count, pitching seven shutout innings in a 5-0 whitewash of the Coppell Copperheads.

Copeland, a sophomore who starred for at Panola College the last two seasons, will be heading to Southern Miss beginning next fall. The Golden Eagles would like to minimize the number of innings for Copeland, who was the top starter for Panola this past spring. As a result, the White Oak native is not expected to make another start for the Pump Jacks this summer.

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Biloxi’s B.A. Vollmuth figures to play a key role in Southern Miss’ bid to make a seventh consecutive appearance in an NCAA baseball regional next season.

The Golden Eagles finished 42-22 in 2008. They lost plenty of firepower in first baseman Trey Sutton, outfielder Drew Carson and third baseman Chris Matesich. Relief pitcher Tyler Conn, the nation’s leader in saves, also has moved on. Read the rest of this entry »

LSU 11, Southern Miss 4

From the middle of the diamond at a raucous Alex Box Stadium, Michael Hollander knew what was coming Sunday night against Southern Miss in the championship game of an NCAA regional tournament.

Heck, by that point of the game and at this point of LSU’s magical baseball season, everybody had a pretty good hunch what was looming with red-hot Blake Dean at the plate and the bases full of Tigers. Read the rest of this entry »

New Orleans 18, Texas Southern 5

Johnny Giavotella was 3-for-3 with a home run and four runs scored, helping New Orleans eliminate Texas Southern from the NCAA tournament with an 18-5 victory Saturday in the Baton Rouge regional.

New Orleans (43-20) blew the game open in the bottom of the fifth, sending 11 batters to the plate and scoring six runs to take a 13-2 lead. Read the rest of this entry »

Trey Sutton, Drew Carson and Michael Ewing each homered in a five-run seventh inning to lift Southern Miss to a 13-6 NCAA opening-game victory over New Orleans Friday night at Alex Box Stadium.

USM (41-20) won its opening game in the NCAA tournament for the second consecutive year, downing Troy 14-1 a year ago in the Oxford Regional. The Golden Eagles advance in the winner’s bracket to face No. 7 national seed LSU in a 6 p.m. Saturday contest. Read the rest of this entry »

The LSU Tigers finished the season on a massive 20 game winning streak. They have a 43-16 record and 18-11 in the SEC this year. The number 2 seed in the Regional is Southern Miss who has a 40-20 record with a Conference USA record of 15-9. New Orleans picked up the three seed with a season record of 42-19 and 18-11 in the Sun Belt. The final team in the regional is Texas Southern who won the SWAC Tourney to get in with a 16-32 record while being 7-17 in the conference. Read the rest of this entry »

FROM CBB NEWS SOURCE
STARKVILLE, Miss. (NCBWA) - Five of college baseball’s top relief specialists have been selected as finalists for the fourth annual National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association Stopper of the Year Award, the NCBWA announced Thursday.

This year’s finalists include NCAA saves leader Tyler Conn of Southern Miss, Scott Bittle of Mississippi, Joshua Fields of Georgia, A.J. Griffin of the University of San Diego and Eric Pettis of UC Irvine. All five relief aces helped their respective teams advance to the 64-team field of the 2008 NCAA Baseball Tournament, which begins this weekend at 16 regional sites across the nation.
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HATTIESBURG - When Tyler Conn takes the mound in a closer for Southern Miss, his competitive nature comes out.

The Ocean Springs native is the nation’s best Division I stopper this season.

Heading into today’s game against New Orleans at Pete Taylor Park, the former Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College standout leads the nation in saves with 15, the single-season record for Southern Miss. He’s also a save away from tying the Conference-USA single-record of 16, set by Tulane Brandon Belanger in 1999. Read the rest of this entry »

Going into this weekend the marquee matchup in Conference USA was Houston at Southern Miss as both teams positioned themselves for seeding at the C-USA Tournament and NCAA berths. However, the home-standing Golden Eagles won all three matchups, including a pair of one-run games to move ahead of the Cougars in the league standings. Tulane won two games at Memphis, with the third game being rained out. UCF surprised Rice on Friday night and played them tough the next two days, but the Owls took back-to-back one-run victories. In an expected high-scoring series, Marshall won twice at UAB and East Carolina swept Presbyterian in non-conference action. Read the rest of this entry »

Rice has continued to distance itself from the rest of the pack in Conference USA. The No. 7 Owls swept a three-game series from No. 24 East Carolina to improve to 13-2 in league play. With second place Houston dropping two-of-three at UAB, Rice now owns a 3.5 game lead in the conference standings. Southern Miss and Tulane renewed their long-standing rivalry and the home standing Green Wave took two of three on Greer Field at Turchin Stadium. Marshall swept its series against UCF in Charleston to move to .500 in C-USA play and overall. Read the rest of this entry »

FROM CBB NEWS SOURCES

Notre Dame 5 Northern Illinois 4

CHICAGO, Ill. - The Northern Illinois baseball team could not snap No. 29 Notre Dame’s ten-game winning streak as the Huskies fell, 5-4, in front of a school-record 4,600 fans at U.S. Cellular Field on Wednesday night.

In a game that had four lead changes, the Fighting Irish (23-9-1) came out on top after a three-base Huskie error in the eighth inning allowed Notre Dame’s Ross Brezovsky to give the Irish a 5-4 lead on an RBI groundout.

The Huskies (15-17) plated two runs in the first inning to take a 2-0 lead off an RBI single from Justin Behm (Downers Grove, Ill./North) that scored Pat Minogue (Crystal Lake, Ill./Central), who led off the game with a single to center. A sacrifice fly from Dave Reynolds (Orland Park, Ill./Sandburg) plated Jeff Thomas (Loves Park, Ill./Harlem) for NIU’s second run. Read the rest of this entry »

Houston sits atop the Conference USA baseball standings after sweeping a three-game series from No. 25 UCF at Cougar Field. UH is just ahead of Rice, which swept a three-game series at Memphis. East Carolina won two-of-three at Southern Miss, while Marshall and Tulane each won one game before tying on Sunday.

Houston’s first league sweep since 2006 was aided by second baseman Ryan Lormand, who went 7-for-12 in the series. Saturday’s middle game saw a strong pitching performance by Ty Stuckey. Read the rest of this entry »

Southern Miss pitching ace Barry Bowden proved on Friday that he was not only among the best pitchers in Conference USA, but is gaining recognition as one of the nation’s better hurlers.

He went up against Rice All-American right-hander Ryan Berry last Friday in Houston and walked away the winner in a 1-0 game, putting his team in position to be the first C-USA squad to win a series against the Owls since the Houston-based college joined the league in 2005.

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From Conference USA release:

It was quite a week for the East Carolina Pirates. After opening a five-game schedule with a wild 20-13 win at Old Dominion, ECU picked up a road win at Virginia Commonwealth and then returned home for the annual Keith LeClair Classic. Bad weather forced Friday’s games to be cancelled, setting up a Saturday doubleheader. The Pirates responded, defeating Pittsburgh in the first game and then knocking off No. 15 Michigan, 6-5, in the second game. On Sunday, ECU downed an always-tough Georgia Southern team, 9-3, to capture the tournament title. Brandon Henderson batted .556 (5-for-9) in the tournament, while Ryan Wood extended his hitting streak to 10 games. Read the rest of this entry »