CONWAY, S.C. — Appalachian State Baseball spent the last three days at Spring Brooks Stadium.
The Mountaineers will return there in a few days to make their first appearance in the Sun Belt Championship tournament.
Appalachian closed the 2019 regular season Saturday with a 9-6 road loss against tournament host Coastal Carolina. App State, which had not posted double-digit league wins in its first four Sun Belt seasons, finished 13-16 to claim sole possession of ninth in the 12-team conference.
The 10-team tournament begins Tuesday in Conway with a pair of single-elimination games, and the ninth-seeded Mountaineers (22-30 overall) will face eighth-seeded Louisiana (27-29, 15-15) at 6:30 p.m., with the winner advancing to the eight-team, double-elimination portion that starts Wednesday.
App State took two of three games during their regular-season series against the Ragin' Cajuns in Louisiana.
In Saturday's regular-season finale, a loss by Coastal Carolina (30-23-1, 15-13) would have dropped the Chanticleers into the 8/9 game against Appalachian, but instead they jumped to the No. 5 seed with their win.
App State trailed 1-0 before
Riley Smith drew a third-inning walk and scored from first on
Luke Allison's double.
Tyler Leek's two-strike groundout advanced Allison to third, and he scored on
Bailey Welch's single to center.
Starting pitcher
Jason Cornatzer allowed one run on three hits in three innings, benefiting from double-play groundouts in each of the first two innings, and Zach Biermann's two-run homer off
Andrew Papp gave Coastal a 3-2 lead in the fourth inning. The next two batters reached, but Papp recorded two straight strikeouts and ended the inning with a flyout to left.
The Mountaineers reclaimed the lead with a two-run fifth, as Leek hit a solo shot for his fifth homer of the season and Welch's single set up an RBI double for
Kendall McGowan. Coastal Carolina moved back ahead with a two-run bottom half of the fifth that included one unearned run. A double and dropped flyball preceded an RBI groundout and RBI single.
App State trailed 5-4 when a lightning delay stopped play at the end of the fifth inning. After a stoppage of two-plus hours, Coastal pitched a scoreless top of the sixth and scored three unearned runs in the bottom half of the inning. The second error of the inning, occurring on a lineout that set up a potential double play, enabled a run to score before Biermann delivered a two-run single on a 3-2 pitch with two away.
Trailing 9-4 entering the ninth, Allison singled to bring home
Joel McDaniel and Leek singled to score
Drew Beck, who had reached base on a pinch-hit double. A strikeout and groundout ended the game.
App State Baseball would like to thank AutoStar Nissan of Boone for serving as the presenting sponsor of the 2019 season.
