Houston Baptist's McCollough Pitches Complete Game
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SUGAR LAND, Texas
– No. 7 Houston Baptist defeated No. 2 Northwestern State 4-1 in the opening day of the 2015 Southland Conference Tournament at Constellation Field.
Northwestern State senior Chase Daughdrill hit a sacrifice fly to right field to score senior Joel Atkinson to give the Demons a 1-0 lead at the end of the first inning.
Junior right-hander Adam Oller pitch 4 2/3 hitless innings before Houston Baptist junior Andrew Alvarez hit a single up the middle. Junior Greg Espinosa followed suit with a single to put runners on the corner with two outs in the top of the fifth inning, but the Huskies we unable to put a run on the board.
Houston Baptist senior Thomas Clay scored from third on a groundout to second from senior Zach Nehrir to tie the game 1-1 in the top of the sixth inning.
In the top of the seventh innings with one out and runners on first and second base Espinosa doubles to the leftfield corner to score Clayton Vaughn giving the Huskies a 2-1 lead over the Demons.
The Huskies’ Nehrir doubled with one out and scored on an error to give Houston Baptist a 3-1 lead in the top of the eighth inning with a Curtis Jones on first base. Samm Wiggins tripped to right field to score Jones before the Demons were able to get out of the inning.
Left-handed junior Matthew McCollough pitched a complete game to improve to 8-2 while striking out six Demons and giving up one run on five hits.
No. 7 Houston Baptist will take on No. 6 Central Arkansas Thursday at 4 p.m. while No. 3 Northwestern State will face No. 3 Nicholls at 9 a.m.
Houston Baptist Coach Jared Moon
"(Junior lefthander Matthew) McCollough pitched outstanding and that's the reason we threw him in the first game, because he's pretty much done that all year for us. Offensively, I was a little worried, because we hadn't played in over a week, so it took us a while to get going. (Northwestern State's) third baseman made some great plays, but the two-out error he made, we were able to capitalize on with (junior second baseman Greg) Espinosa coming up with the big hit."
"Defensively, Espinosa made some great plays, especially the one up the middle in the eighth inning to get the force out and the lead runner at second. We just played solid baseball and I told the hitters I think we are better than what we showed offensively. We didn't take a lot of good swings early on, later in the game it got better, so hopefully we can pick up where we left off tomorrow."
Junior LHP Matthew McCollough
"Everything was working for me, I just had a lot of energy at the beginning of the game, leaving the ball up and I couldn't hit the strike zone, but I settled in and the defense was behind me, then the hitting came through. It was a great game. I had a lot more control as the game went on, and I had a lot more confidence."
Northwestern State Coach Lane Burroughs
"We made good plays early. The bottom line is McCullough diced us up. He pitched good, so I'm not going to take away anything from the young man, but we hit maybe two balls hard. You talk about soft contact, that was the epitome of it today."
"We should have had better at-bats, but shoulda, coulda, woulda doesn't do much for you right now. We've got to come out and win however many games to win the championship. I'm very proud