Louisiana Ragin’ Cajuns baseball found itself in a unique position last week, entering their home matchup against the Louisiana Tech Bulldogs on Wed, April 10 ranked at No. 19 in the nation, on a 16-game win streak with a Sun Belt-leading 11–1 record in conference games.
The team went on to lose the streak in disappointing fashion, giving up 15 hits in a game that was never really close.
In a postgame interview, Head Coach Matt Deggs gave the Bulldogs respect in the upset and offered some perspective on the win streak ending.
“They came in and outplayed us tonight,” Deggs said. “They have an Omaha-type team. I truly believe that if they catch a break or two they’ve got the arms, they’ve got the older hitters. They came in and won the fastball tonight, they had more strike zone discipline than us, they put the ball in play more when it mattered.”
“I told the team in the dugout, I’m so proud of them. They got to do something that 99.99% of people that play this game at a high level never get the chance to do,” Deggs said. “We’ll take tomorrow off, come back Friday and look to play better baseball.”
Coming back to the Tigue on Friday, the Cajuns faced a middle-of-the-road Marshall Thundering Herd that had split its last six conference games and been taken into extra innings in its midweek game.
Junior pitcher Andrew Hermann drew his fifth start of the season for the Cajuns and started off strong, striking out three batters and only allowing one on base on a full-count walk through three innings.
On the offense, though, the Cajuns bats struggled to barrel up on Marshall’s workhorse pitcher Drew Harlow, who was already seeing his ninth game of the season with a majority of the pitching load.
Once the power of the Cajuns lineup came back around in the batting order, they made a change in the scoreboard with a pair of solo shots by Lee Amedee and Conor Higgs in the bottom of the fourth inning.
Hermann and Harlow worked through some adversity in the fifth and sixth respectively, as the former shut down AJ Havrilla and Jack Firestone with a runner in scoring position to keep the score at 2–0 and the latter shook off a mound visit to get himself out of a serious jam against Jose Torres.
Marshall scored its lone run of the game off a Gio Ferraro home run to open up the seventh inning. Ace pitcher LP Langevin came in relief for the Cajuns and proceeded to throw a masterclass, recording seven strikeouts in his 2.2 innings of work to earn himself the save and the Cajuns a win, 3–1.
Deggs seemed impressed with the pitching on both sides in a postgame interview Friday. “I thought [Harlow] pitched his heart out and had a good-riding fastball that was hard to get to.”
“Lee really let us take a breath right there with that oppo jack and Higgs had a big night which we needed out of him,” Deggs said. “LP came in, slammed the door right there and finished strong for us, and that’s been our formula and it’s been working.”
On Saturday afternoon, freshman Chase Morgan got the start for the Cajuns. The formula of this game was similar to the prior night, with both teams in striking distance the whole way through.
Morgan would pitch an incredible eight-inning shutout, ending the night with 11 strikeouts, just three walks and one recorded hit. Maddox Mandino would bring in the lone run of the game in the third, reaching on fielder’s choice as Higgs scored.
“We were just able to scrape a run together right there,” Deggs said in a postgame interview Saturday.
“I will credit our hitters, as good as Blevins was today, we did hit a lot of balls hard. Back to [Morgan], he is effectively wild a little bit with his fastball, that’ll knock a hitter off his mark, because he keeps coming back into counts,” Deggs said. “Then, he can land a breaking ball and a changeup any time he wants.”
Next up on the schedule for the Cajuns is a three-game away series against the Coastal Carolina Chanticleers starting Friday, April 19 followed by a midweek match against the Houston Christian Huskies on April 24.