In spite of the rain and the shortening of their baseball tournament, the Sun Belt certainly has delivered on their famous moniker for being “fun”.
    Between Georgia Southern’s late-night grand slam, the defending national champions being upset by the No. 8 seed and Arkansas State dropping 21 runs on Georgia State -- there’s been plenty to talk about during this week’s tournament run.
    However, “fun” would not be a word to describe the mostly uneventful contest between No. 3 South Alabama and No. 7 seed Arkansas State. But at the end of the afternoon South Alabama found themselves on top Arkansas State 4-2, making them the highest seed left standing in the SBC tournament.
    “I’m happy with the results. We were a little bit sloppy with some of the smaller things,” said South Alabama head coach Mark Calvi. “We popped  some bunts up and give Arkansas State credit they defended it, but we didn’t do some of the little things right.”
    Between pitchers who couldn’t keep runners off base and the hitters who struggled to drive them in, the math says Arkansas State had just as good of a chance as South Alabama did to move on to today’s championship game. However it ultimately came down to the Jags being able to jump on Arkansas State starter Tanner Kirby early, giving them just enough breathing room to hold off the upstart No. 7 seed.
    With a man on second with two outs in the top of the first inning, Travis Swaggerty belted a 1-1 pitch straight to centerfield which looped just over ASU centerfielder Garrett Rucker who was fighting off the sun to find the ball. Wells Davis would follow with a single to drive in Swaggerty to make it 2-0 early for the Jags, but that was by far the most eventful inning in terms of offense.
    “I thought the game played out in the first inning. They did a really good job with two outs and got some  hits to score a couple of runs,” said Arkansas State head coach Tommy Raffo. “Then they made a great play on the double play ball on us. If that ball goes  through we score two and it’s a totally different ball game because we have two and a guy batting with runners on and one out.”
    Kirby would be pulled after only an inning and two thirds of work where he allowed six baserunners and two runs in just 11 batters faced. Brandon Stuckenschneider would come on in relief to give Arkansas State four decent enough innings to keep USA at bay, but it could have been much worse.
    USA would load the bases twice against the redshirt freshman, but in both the second and third innings the Jags would fly out with the bases juiced to limit what is normally a very good offense. USA would leave the bases loaded in three separate occasions to give them a total of 15 runners left on for the game.
    “It was a concern, but Tyler (Carr) was throwing really well so I wasn’t quite as concerned,” Calvi said. “If I thought he was wavering, the runners left on base would have concerned me. It is a concern, but Arkansas State had a little bit to do with that as well.”
    Arkansas State had their chance to tie the game in the bottom of the seventh when they finally got a crack at a Jag reliever Avery Geyer. After six decent enough innings from starter Tyler Carr, Geyer came in and immediately gave up a four pitch walk and then a double to Rucker the very next throw.
    This allowed Grant Hawkins to make a run at home plate, or rather into USA catcher Carter Perkins. With Perkins standing right in front of home plate, Hawkins late slide attempt would wind up spearing Perkins right into the dirt and after a lengthy review by the umpires -- score the run.
    But out would come Geyer and in would come USA closer Matt Peacock. After a sac bunt to move Rucker over to third, Peacock would retire the next two batters in six pitches to strand the tying run 90 feet from home.
    Between the six pitchers who threw in the game, Peacock would stand head and shoulders above as the most effective and eventually the most important in the game. He’d find a way to stand a runner in scoring position in both the seventh and eighth inning to shut out Arkansas State in the final three innings and pick up his tenth save of the season.
    “I don’t have Matt in there when we’re up by five or six, he’s in there when I feel like he’s the guy,” Calvi said. “When we have nine outs to get, somewhere in that point of the game  Matt’s going to be in there.”
    The third and what would eventually become the deciding run came off the bat of Perkins, who took advantage of an error earlier in the fifth inning to drive in Drew Labounty from second base. Perkins would be one of three Jags to reach base safely in the game along with Davis and Hunter Stokes.
    The loss ends a tournament run for Arkansas State which gained life after they upset UT-Arlington in Friday’s quarterfinals. The Red Wolves will go home 28-27 on the season and have now won at least two conference games their last eight SBC tournaments.
    As for USA, they’ll head on to the championship game this afternoon to face Georgia Southern for the Sun Belt Conference Championship and a potential berth to the NCAA tournament. If South Alabama were to win today, it would be there first tournament championship since 2005 and the first time they’d qualify for back-to-back NCAA tournaments since 2006.