Southeast Missouri State baseball leaves past behind, tops JSU for tourney title, regional berth

JACKSON, Tenn. — The feeling finally disappeared for Southeast Missouri State baseball coach Steve Bieser.

After two years as regular-season Ohio Valley Conference champions and No. 1 seed only to have the season end short of a tournament title, Bieser questioned everything that led to that heartbreak.

But on Sunday the program left that all behind, dropping second-seeded Jacksonville State 14-8 to win the OVC Tournament championship and earn an automatic berth into an NCAA Regional.

When the final out was recorded against JSU, there was no more wondering about the what-ifs. Instead Bieser was left watching his players race to the center of the diamond at The Ballpark in Jackson, Tennessee, where they threw water in the air and celebrated their victory over the Gamecocks with a dog pile, and knew that everything had finally worked out.

“The monkey’s off the back a little bit, at least for today,” Bieser said with a smile. “It’s been tough. It’s been tough on me because when you lose this tournament whenever you were the best team in the league for the past few years you always look back at decisions that you made and you look back and know that there were things that you could’ve done differently that would’ve given your team the best chance to win, and those were always tough.

"... The feeling that I walked onto the field with today was that I felt very confident in our team. I felt confident in the situation. It did not feel overwhelming today that we had to go out and win two games and the key was getting off in the first game and getting out with the lead.”

Southeast Missouri State baseball players celebrate after winning the Ohio Valley Conference tournament championship with a 14-8 victory over Jacksonville State.Fred Lynch (Southeast Missourian)

The Redhawks staved off elimination earlier Sunday with a 10-7 win vs. the Gamecocks to force the winner-take-all final. They improved to 39-19, which sets a new mark for most wins in a season.

It was the third overall tournament title and first since 2002 for Southeast.

"Just a surreal feeling. I can't explain how we feel,” Bieser said. “There was a lot of pressure on this club and I think a lot of pressure on our seniors and the guys that have been here for the past three years. I know I felt pressure, and this is probably the most pressure I've felt in the tournament setting yet. Just felt like we had to get it done this time. Seeing our seniors really rally around and come through on two tough days with back to back doubleheaders, just super excited for those guys.”

It wasn’t a perfect performance for Southeast. The Redhawks, who lost to JSU 11-7 on Saturday before topping Austin Peay in an elimination game that lasted past midnight Saturday, committed five errors and lost an early lead in the title match.

But for senior shortstop Branden Boggetto, who played on all three of the regular-season championship teams, the response in those difficult moments made all the difference.

“It still really hasn’t sunk in yet, but I think what separates this team from past teams is that we had each other’s back until the end,” Boggetto said. “Past teams we’d go down in some games and we’d back down from a challenge, we didn’t rise up. This year we had a bunch of leaders on the team that refused to let this team lose, and that was the biggest key to our success.”

Southeast held a 4-0 lead after one inning, but JSU quickly cut the deficit to one in the top of the second.

The Gamecocks took their first lead with a four-run third that put them up 7-4.

The Redhawks got one run back in the bottom of the fourth, but stranded the bases loaded.

Hunter Leeper tied it up at 7-7 in the home half of the fifth with a two-run home run to left before a leadoff error and failed pickoff led to JSU regaining a one-run lead in the sixth.

Southeast Missouri State's Trevor Ezell is greeted at the dugout during the Redhawks' Ohio Valley Conference tournament championship game against Jacksonville State.Fred Lynch (Southeast Missourian)

Trevor Ezell led off the bottom of the inning with a triple and scored the tying run on a bunt single by Osborne.

Gandolfo doubled into the corner in left, driving in Osborne for the winning run. The Redhawks, who recorded 17 hits in the game, added some insurance with four runs in the seventh and another in the eighth.

“It was just they followed to cue what I told them to do. I think that they put together excellent approaches,” Bieser said. “The focus of each individual — you can get three or four guys locked in and really following the approach, but whenever all nine guys start buying into the approach and start sticking to that approach it’s a huge success.

"We knew that there were going to be ups and downs, we knew that we would get a lead, that we would give a lead up, it would go back and forth. We knew that was going to happen today at some point and that’s the first thing that we talked about when we got over here as a group. We got together and told them there’s going to be a lot of emotion, we can’t get too high, can’t get too low, and just stay locked in for the entire two games.”

Southeast Missouri State's Joey Lucchesi pitches to a Jacksonville State batter during the Ohio Valley Conference tournament championship on Sunday at The Ballpark in Jackson, Tennessee.Fred Lynch (Southeast Missourian)

Left-handed pitcher Joey Lucchesi, who started and pitched a complete-game shutout Friday, entered in the seventh with a one-run lead and shutdown the Gamecocks. He allowed one hit in three scoreless frames for his first save.

Senior righty Brady Wright (1-2) picked up his first win of the season. He entered with a runner on second and Southeast trailing 5-4 with no one outs in the top of the third and allowed just one unearned run in that frame and another unearned in the sixth.

JSU mustered just two hits against him in four innings. He didn’t walk a batter and struck out five in just his 14th appearance of the season. He hadn’t pitched longer than two innings in an outing this season and entered the game having pitched 9 2/3 innings.

“What a magnificent performance Brady Wright gave us,” Bieser said. “To me, that’s a huge accomplishment what he did. He’s been overlooked so often every single weekend series because our starting pitchers have been so good ...

"The one thing I told the guys with about three weeks to go in the season, I said, ‘You can’t stop working. I know it’s frustrating you’re not getting work out of the bullpen, but you can’t stop working because if you do you’re going to be exposed on the biggest stage and you’re going to be embarrassed if you’re not ready,’ and Brady Wright was ready and responded. To me, he’s the star of the game.”

The Redhawks will have a watch party for the NCAA Regional selection show at 11 a.m. today at Wings, Etc. in Cape Girardeau. Regionals are Friday through Sunday.

“I think we’ve just got to keep doing what we’re doing,” Boggetto said. “We’re pitching well, swinging the bats well. This opportunity doesn’t come along every year so we want to take full advantage of the opportunity in front of us and not be intimidated by any big team that we’re going to face, going in there and playing like it’s just another game and hopefully we come out on top and see what happens.”