In their second home series of the season, the Louisiana Ragin’ Cajuns dropped two in a row to the Rice Horned Owls on Feb. 24 and 25, 1–2 and 1–6 respectively.
After a good opening week against the Wright State Raiders, offensive struggles reared their head.
Head coach Matt Deggs had a lot of good to say about the development of the team after the Wright State matchup.
“For the foreseeable future, [we want to] invest, kind of like we did with [Dex] Kjerstad in ‘13, invest in bats, in Josh Alexander. That’s a big-league talent. So is Luke [Yuhasz], so is [Trey] LaFleur,” Deggs said in a Feb. 19 press conference.
Deggs also spoke briefly on the pressure of maintaining a successful program in spite of the pressure of expectations.
“As long as they can give us something, we can invest in them, because like it or not, you’ve got to work to win every game with RPI hanging over your head, you just do,” Deggs said.
“I wish it wasn’t that way, but it is. I wish you could pick a subset of games and say, ‘These are our RPI games,’ or maybe RPI starts after conference, but it doesn’t,” Deggs said. “So that ties your hands.”
In Friday’s offering, Jack Martinez got the call to start for the Cajuns. Immediately, the Owls made his job as hard as possible, drawing two full-count walks and a 3–1 walk in the first inning, culminating in a Manny Garza sac fly to put the first points on the board.
In the Cajuns’ first offensive showing, Rice’s Parker Smith coaxed a looking strikeout. Kyle DeBarge tried and failed to steal second, and a groundout quickly ended the proceedings.
The pitching would prevail until the top of the third, when Garza would again take a swing and would earn himself another RBI, this time boosted by an untimely error by Cajuns’ center fielder Josh Alexander.
After barely getting out of the rest of the inning and allowing a single to start the fourth, the Cajuns would pull Martinez and put senior David Christie on the mound. The Cajuns still couldn’t get out of their own way on offense, as any momentum was eaten by either an error or an excellent defensive stop, like a groundout into a double play in the fourth.
The Cajuns did eventually mount a comeback attempt starting in the sixth. Caleb Stelly extended the offense with a successful steal of second, and Luke Yuhasz hit a sac fly to bring him in. The team very nearly tied it in the eighth where a Lee Amedee hit-by-pitch take and a Trey LaFleur single set the stage for at least one run, but the Owls’ Davion Hickson shut down the bats with two straight groundouts to seal the eventual final score.
Saturday’s match was similarly one-sided, but the Owls seemed much more comfortable in the box for this one. Chase Morgan started for the Cajuns, and he almost immediately got himself into trouble.
He allowed Kyte McDonald to single, then hit Pierce Gallo with a pitch, and finally allowed RBI’s to Garza and Jack Riedel respectively. The rest of the game went by in a blur, as the Cajuns ended up using four different pitchers in relief, including previous LP Langevin, a starter in the Wright State series.
When asked before about restraining from overuse of Langevin specifically, Deggs said, “That’s a thing. I wish we had like two or three of him. That’s a thing, and I think Gunner [Leger] is probably the voice of reason on that side of it. He’s more like Coach [Robicheaux] than he is like me and that’s probably a good thing, cause I like LP.”
Next up for the Cajuns is the Sunday, Feb. 25 game against the Owls to wrap up the series, then a midweek matchup against the Northwestern State Demons on Wednesday, Feb. 28.