Long Beach Paints Itself Into a Corner

BATON ROUGE, La. — The beauty of double-elimination tournaments is that everyone gets a second chance.

No matter how awful you play in your first loss, there’s always tomorrow. For Long Beach State, “tomorrow” is today.

Outplayed from the start and pounded throughout, Long Beach was routed by South Alabama, 12-4, and forced into the NCAA South I Regional losers’ bracket Friday night in front of 1,740 at Alex Box Stadium.

Fourth-seeded Long Beach fights for its postseason life today against sixth-seeded North Carolina Greensboro at 1 p.m. (PDT). If Long Beach wins, it would play top-seeded Louisiana State, the tournament host, or South Alabama again at 5:30. But one more performance like Friday’s, and the 49ers’ off-season is on.

“We’ve got to do a better job with ourselves,” said Long Beach Coach Dave Snow, whose team dropped to 38-25. “We got frustrated and we got away from some things. We showed a lack of discipline with our pitching and our hitting and I’m not too happy about that.

“There’s no room for that at this level. We’ve got some things we’ve got to straighten out before [today].”

Second-seeded South Alabama (42-17) put the game away with five runs in the sixth inning off of Long Beach reliever Matt Montgomery. South Alabama had four hits in the inning, including Joey Choron’s 19th home run--his second two-run homer of the game to left field. South Alabama held a 12-4 lead after six, and Long Beach was already thinking about today’s possible season finale.

Long Beach starter Daryl Grant (3-1) struggled from the beginning against South Alabama, just the way you might think a freshman would in his NCAA tournament debut. The left-hander had been stellar as a late-season starter for the 49ers, winning three consecutive starts and giving up only two earned runs during his previous 20 2/3 innings.

But South Alabama didn’t care and it showed. In a short night’s work, Grant gave up six earned runs, three walks and two homers in 1 1/3 innings.

“He was pitching over the middle of the plate, and when he wasn’t over the middle he was missing,” Snow said of Grant. “Not getting more out of him hurt and we didn’t do much offensively.”

Long Beach kept fighting despite trailing, 7-0, after only three innings. Long Beach put together a big third inning against South Alabama starter Stephen Sparks (11-0), who pitched a six-hitter, giving up four earned runs with four walks and seven strikeouts.

In the third, Sparks walked Casey Martin and gave up a single to Steve Doherty. Martin and Doherty advanced to third and second on a wild pitch, and Martin scored on a ground out by Lateef Vaughn.

Doherty scored on a single by J.J. Newkirk that cut South Alabama’s lead to 7-2. Paul Day singled and Sparks walked Izzy Gonzalez to load the bases.

A walk to Toby Sanchez forced in Newkirk and Chuck Lopez’s two-out single brought Day home. Martin, the 10th man to bat in the inning, sent right fielder Tom Whitehurst to the wall for the third out.

That reduced the deficit to 7-4, but the 49ers never got closer.

South Alabama’s Brey Curtis singled to open the game and stole second with one out. Then Choron crushed a pitch that soared over the left-field bleachers and landed about 400 feet from home plate. Choron’s 18th home run gave South Alabama a 2-0 lead, and gave Snow a lot to be concerned about.

Although Grant struck out the next two batters to end the inning, he didn’t have control of his pitches. He labored to find the strike zone in the first inning, which proved to be a bad sign.

In other South I games:

UNC Greensboro 9, Houston 5--Mark Oetjen’s two-run double sparked a five-run sixth inning, as the Spartans rallied to eliminate Houston (40-23).

UNC Greensboro (45-16) played only 45 minutes after wrapping up its first game, a 14-0 loss to LSU that had to be finished Friday morning after rain halted it in the bottom of the fifth Thursday night.

LSU 14, Oklahoma 3--Brandon Larson had two of the Tigers’ five home runs, and the defending national champs broke the NCAA team home run record for a season with 165.