Trio combines on 5-hitter as USM baseball wins 10th straight

HATTIESBURG, Miss. (WDAM) - Three University of Southern Mississippi pitchers combined for 15 strikeouts Sunday as the Golden Eagles won their 10th consecutive game by topping long-time rival University of South Alabama 6-1 at Pete Taylor Park.

USM finished off a weekend series sweep of the Jaguars as the Golden Eagles kept pace atop the Sun Belt Conference standings with Coastal Carolina University.

Sunday’s win not only extended the longest current winning streak in college baseball to 10 games, but gave the Golden Eagles (32-17, 17-7) a double-digit winning streak in each of the past two seasons.

In 2022, USM won a program-record 15 games in a row.

Each starting USM player collected at least one hit Sunday, with Rodrigo Montenegro, Carson Paetow and Reece Ewing picking up two hits apiece in the Golden Eagles’ 12-hit attack.

Pitchers Matt Adams, Chase Adams and Niko Mazza combined to scatter five hits and six walks over nine innings,

The lone run for the Jaguars (23-24, 11-13) came on Joseph Sullivan’s 11h home run of the season, a solo shot off USM starter Matt Adams in the fourth inning.

After that, Chase Adams and Mazza kept USA off the scoreboard, but only by the hardest.

Adams (1-0) got the final two outs of the fourth inning before turning the ball over to Mazza.

Mazza gave up four hits and walked three while throwing 92 pitches over the final five innings.

But Mazza, who picked up his second save of the season, also struck out nine batters to help him work through some jams as the Jaguars stranded seven of their 11 baserunners over those final five innings.

USA loaded the bases with two outs in both the fifth and sixth innings, but Mazza got a strikeout to end each of the innings

USM grabbed a 2-0 lead in the first inning off USA starters Jeremy Lee (2-6). and went up 4-0 after three innings.

Christopher Sargent and Reece Ewing each had RBI-singles in the first, while Paetow and Nick Monistere each had run-scoring singles in the third inning.

Up 4-1, USM added a run on in the sixth inning when Montenegro doubled and eventually scored on a balk and another in the seventh inning on Danny Lynch’s seventh home run of the season, a solo blast to right field.

The Golden Eagles will travel to the University of Louisiana-Monroe for a three-game, SBC weekend series starting at 6 p.m. Friday in Monroe, La.

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