The Citadel; W 9-3

In their first five innings against The Citadel Tuesday night, Georgia Southern couldn’t plate a single run, but in the final four frames the Eagles’ offense exploded, resulting in a 9-3 victory.

The Eagles scored their first pair of runs in the top of the 6th inning where walks to Steven Curry and Roury Glanton came around to score thanks to a few Bulldog wild pitches and errors

Georgia Southern didn’t score their first RBI of the game until the 8th inning that came in the form of a Christian Avant triple, which plated one run. The Eagles went on to score 2 more runs in the 8th to extend their lead to 6-2.

Senior Chandler Corley put on a show at the plate, going 3-for-5, which included a 3 run home run in the top of the 9th inning to give the Eagle’s a 6 run lead.

Although he didn’t factor in the decision for the Eagles, freshman pitcher Griffin Davis put on a good performance in his first career start. He worked 5 total innings, allowing just 1 run on 5 hits.

Junior pitcher Zach Cowart earned the win for Georgia Southern in his outing, it’s just his second career win with the program.

Eagles’ head coach Rodney Hennon summed up the game pretty well by saying “there were a lot of mistakes out there, but thankfully we were able to overcome them.”

College of Charleston; L 3-0

The Eagles didn’t have much time to look back on their performance against the Bulldogs, because the very next day the set out to Patriot’s Point Park to face off against the College of Charleston. Where Georgia Southern’s 4 game win streak was snapped against the Cougars.

The Eagles failed to get anything going for them offensively, producing just 5 hits throughout the entire course of the ball game. It didn’t help their cause that the Cougars’ pitchers tallied up 9 strikeouts on Georgia Southern’s batters.

Sophomore pitcher Zach Strickland went a career long 5 innings allowing only 1 earned run, but that was enough to pin him with a loss. He gave up a solo home run to the Cougars’ Danny Wondrack in the bottom of the 2nd inning, leaving the Eagles down 1-0.

It stayed a 1 run game until Wondrack struck again in the 7th, hitting his 2nd home run of the day to extend the lead to 2-0 for the College of Charleston. The Cougars pushed across their 3rd and final run of the evening by capitalizing on an Eagle error.

The loss not only snaps Georgia Southern’s 4 game winning streak this year, but it also ends their winning streak against the Cougars themselves that dates back to the 2016 season.

This will not be the last time these two teams meet on the diamond, with two more contests remaining on the schedule between the two of them, once in Statesboro and then back to Patriot’s Point in late April.

The Eagles head back to the ‘Boro this weekend to host a 3 game series against the Elon Phoenix. The first game of the series on Friday, March 2 is set to begin at 6:30 p.m from J.I. Clement’s Stadium.

Ryan Pye, The George-Anne sports candidate, gasports@georgiasouthern.edu