Southeast baseball team's championship season ends

Southeast Missouri State baseball coach Steve Bieser pushed his emotions about the outcome of the Redhawks game against No. 3 Jacksonville State aside to address his players after the game.

The Ohio Valley Conference regular-season champions had just been eliminated from the conference tournament with a 6-2 loss to the Gamecocks, but Bieser focused on the season as a whole rather than the team's final game when addressing the players.

"I told them I'm proud of them," Bieser said. "As big of a competitor I am, and as frustrated as I was about the way I really thought we played -- I was frustrated, but I am extremely proud of them. It's hard to push this game away so quick because there were things that we could've done better, and had this been a middle-of-the-season game there probably would've been a way different conversation at the end of the game. But I am proud of them.

"They battled all season long. It just wasn't meant to be in this tournament, and I think Cole [Bieser] said it best, you know, you come in for a three-game set in a season, and obviously we didn't play our best three-game set here, going 1-2. We haven't done that very often, and we happened to lay the egg here in the conference tournament, the worst time to lay the egg. That was tough."

The Redhawks scored two runs in the first inning, and it seemed like the four-hit performance in the winner's bracket final the night before would be a fluke.

Center fielder Cole Bieser hit a one-out single and advanced to third on a single from OVC Player of the Year Matt Tellor. Designated hitter Derek Gibson singled to right to score Bieser, and Tellor later scored on a sac fly.

Southeast would only muster two more hits the entire game. One was a lead-off triple by left fielder Clayton Evans in the fifth that resulted in Evans being caught in a rundown. Right fielder Dalton Hewitt singled to right with two outs in the sixth but was stranded.

Southeast Missouri State starter Ryan Lenaburg delivers a pitch against Jacksonville State on Saturday at the OVC tournament. (Wayne McPherson)

"Really what happened was their pitcher settled in and threw really well," Steve Bieser said. "Because in pregame they did exactly what I asked them to do to loosen up, play the game relaxed, and we did a very good job of coming out loose and relaxed and had some really good at-bats early on. What happened was we just couldn't sustain those at-bats because they were locating and making very good pitches. I thought we did get caught up a little bit just knowing that we could hit any pitch that was thrown up there but not really selecting the best pitches, and we got a little overanxious I think at times.

"Give [Graham] Officer credit because he did a great job of exposing that over-aggressiveness on us and making excellent pitches against us that slowed our offense down."

The Gamecocks were held scoreless through the first three innings but erased Southeast's lead in the fourth.

Southeast starter Ryan Lenaburg walked JSU right fielder Griff Gordon and gave up a base hit to designated hitter Paschal Petrongolo to put runners on the corners with no outs. Both scored on sac flies.

The Gamecocks took the lead in the sixth on reliever Greg Mosel, who was credited with the loss. Petrongolo doubled to lead off the inning and scored on an error by third baseman Andy Lennington.

Another error in the seventh allowed JSU to extend its lead to 4-2. With runners on first and third and one out, reliever Christian Hull threw a pickoff attempt in the dirt at first that allowed center fielder Michael Bishop to score.

"And again we didn't make the plays on defense like has been typical all year, and whatever the reason is -- I can't put my finger on it, " Steve Bieser said. "But we're going to go back and look at it and make sure things like that don't happen in the future."

The Redhawks didn't threaten with a comeback late in the game as the last nine batters were retired in order.

"I think sometimes you get into pressure situations and you want to do a little more than you've been doing," Cole Bieser said. "You want to hit the ball farther, you want to hit it harder, you want to hit it through somebody as opposed to just doing your job.

Southeast Missouri State catcher Cole Ferguson loses his bat after a swing against Jacksonville State on Saturday at the OVC Tournament. (Wayne McPherson)

"And we have to give credit to the pitching that was against us. When you're the one seed, people come out and they want you to lose a lot more than the want the five or six seed to lose, so they come out and they give you their best shot. … We ran into a couple pitchers who really settled in and just kind of executed their gameplan on us, and you know, the old motto is, 'Good pitching will beat good hiting.' That's kind of what happened."

JSU scored twice in the eighth to secure their victory and advance to face No. 2 Tennessee Tech later Saturday. The Gamecocks defeated Tech 10-7 to force a winner-take-all championship game at noon Sunday.

The Redhawks spectacular season ended with a record of 37-20. The team tied the school record for wins and collected the program's second regular-season conference title.

"But again, I just told them they've done so much for this program to get it back on the right track and starting to win conference championships, and that to be an expectation rather than a once in awhile thing," said Steve Bieser, who won the conference's coach of the year award in his second season leading the team. "That's an expectation for this program now is to win conference championships. And then hopefully next year we get back here and compete a little better. Because we can look back, and coming in as a five or six seed -- we were much more dangerous as a five or six seed than we were this year.

"That's something that, it's different playing whenever you've got the target on your back and we'll learn from that. I mean, you can see Tennessee Tech, they've learned. This year they're playing very loose. They were here last year, and they had the target on their back and it was tough to play that way. This is a good conference, and eventually our conference is going to start getting two teams in [to the NCAA tournament] because there's some pretty good teams in this conference. One of these teams that wins this, they're going to make some noise in the regional, and that's what we need."