The 2022-2023 regular baseball season came to an end in Memphis TN as the Cougars took one win in the final conference series vs Southwest Tennessee winning game one 7-3 while losing 8-5 and
12-3 in the final games of the three-game series. The results put Cougar Baseball with an overall record of 24-22 and a conference mark of 11-14.
Cleveland State now awaits the announcement of their opponent as the NJCAA-TCCAA Region VII Tournament is slated to begin on Sunday May 7 at Volunteer State.
Game One Recap
In the 7-3 game one win, the Cougars used 11 hits to score seven runs with two in the first inning, one in the second and four in the seventh to put the game away. Cooper Casteel went the distance for his sixth win of the season striking out six Southwest batters.
Jaylen Jones and Rhett Hammontree had three hits each while Bryce Burkey, AJ Swader, Riley Orr, Ryan Langford and Bryson Trammell each had one. Orr led the way with three RBI's while Jacob Robinson, Avery Collins, Swader and Langford each drove in one.
Extra base hits came off the bats of Hammontree and Langford who doubled and Orr with a triple.
Southwest jumped off to a 5-0 lead after two innings as Cleveland State scored three in there half of the third cutting the Southwest lead to 5-3. The Cougars scored two more runs in the 8-5 loss with one in fifth and another in the seventh.
With 10 hits on the game Hammontree banged out three again while Swader had two. Burkey, Jones, Cannon Stafford, Ryan Stephens and Robinson each had one in the Cougars hitting attack. Stafford's hit was a two-run homer in the third inning.
Game Three Recap
The final nine inning game of the series turned into a 12-3 Cleveland State loss as they managed seven hits scoring one in the first inning and a final two in the fifth.
Burkey had three hits including a double and a two-run homer in the fifth. Swader, Orr, Colby Taylor and Collins with a double each had one hit with Orr's hit in the first plating a run.
