Baseball Earns SBC Tournament Berth

NEW ORLEANS ? Louisiana's Ragin' Cajuns had an opportunity to guarantee themselves a berth in the Sun Belt Conference Tournament, and seized it with a convincing 12-4 win over UNO Friday at Maestri Field. The Cajuns secured a bid to the conference tournament with the victory.

The Cajuns improve to 24-28-1 and 13-15 in the Sun Belt Conference with the win, and carry some valuable momentum into Saturday's series and regular season finale. Should UL sweep, they would finish with no worse than a fifth-place tie with South Alabama in the regular season standings.

Louisiana received another impressive starting performance from red-hot Justin Robichaux. Though his string of consecutive innings without allowing an earned run came to an end at 30 in the fourth inning, he powered the team to a victory on a strong outing from the mound. He is now 2-3 on the season.

Justin Robichaux carried a hitless game into the fourth when he allowed UNO's first hit of the game. He gave up two runs in that inning to break the streak, but locked down and held UNO scoreless in the fifth, sixth and seventh before exiting for Luke Wagley, who started the eighth. Robichaux finished seven innings allowing two runs, both earned, on just five hits, three walks and four strikeouts. He now has not allowed an earned run in 33 of his last 34 innnings.

Luke Wagley pitched the eighth and ninth innings, allowing three runs, two earned, on four hits, one walk and one strikeout.

The story of the weekend has been the Cajuns offense, which has now posted 28 hits through two games of the series, with 14 base hit outings both Thursday and Friday. Seven batters posted hits, five of them with two or more, and five different players registered RBIs.

Chad Keefer went 2-for-3 with three RBIs and two runs scored on a three-run home run and a double to lead the Cajuns' offense, joined in the three RBI category by Kyle Olasin who was 2-for-5. Greg Fontenot scored three times and drove two more across on 3-for-5 hitting, and Kyle Bostick also went 3-for-5 with three runs scored and one RBI to round out an impressive team outing from the plate.

The game opened with one scoreless inning before Louisiana scored in the top of the second. Scott Hawkins doubled to the gap in right-center and moved to third on a Chad Keefer sacrifice bunt. Greg Fontenot delivered him with an RBI single up the middle. Kyle Bostick reached on an error to put runners on first and second, then both he and Fontenot moved up one bag on a double steal during Tyler Benzel's at bat. He hit an RBI groundout to score Fontenot, and Kyle Olasin then singled to right field to score Bostick. Thanks to the error, two out of the three runs came across unearned.

Chad Keefer stepped to the plate in the third inning following a Les Smith double and cranked a two-run jack to left field to give the Cajuns a 5-0 advantage.

UNO struck in the fourth with two runs on their first four hits of the game. The earned runs stopped Robichaux's streak of 30 consecutive innings without allowing an earned run and put the Privateers with three runs at 5-2.

Chad Keefer added his third RBI in the fifth inning with a two-out double to the left field corner to score Alex Fuselier from second, and Greg Fontenot drove Keefer in with his own double to right-center field. Kyle Bostick singled Fontenot around before Tyler Benzel smacked the inning's third double to bring Bostick home. Kyle Olasin then kept the string alive, adding the team's fifth straight two-out hit with a single through the right side to score Benzel before the rally ended. The Cajuns scored five runs on five hits and two errors, all with two outs, to take a definitive 10-2 advantage into the bottom of the fifth.

Greg Fontenot led off the seventh inning with a single, moved to third on a Kyle Bostick double down the left field line and scored on a wild pitch. Kyle Olasin hit an RBI groundout to second base to score Bostick from third, and make a 10-run UL lead at 12-2.

UNO pushed two across in the eighth and one in the ninth on four hits off of Wagley. Only two of the runs were earned, thanks to a fielding error on Kyle Bostick at second.

The Cajuns finish the UNO series Saturday at 3 p.m. on NewsRadio 105.1 KPEL FM and at KPEL1501.com, while CST will be broadcasting the game live on television. RaginCajuns.com will have live video as well as live statistics.

NOTES

· Justin Robichaux pitched three innings today before allowing an earned run, completing a streak of 30 consecutive innings without allowing an earned run. He allowed two runs in the fourth and then pitched scoreless fifth, sixth and seventh innings.

· The Cajuns posted 14 hits both Thursday and today. The team has only had back-to-back 14 or better hit totals on two prior occasions this year, with three straight 14 hit games against UALR March 20-22 in Lafayette and against Middle Tennessee April 4 and April 5. The Cajuns won all five of those games.

· Justin Robichaux will finish the regular season one inning short of the minimum for innings pitched to rank in the overall Sun Belt pitching statistics. His 2.08 ERA would lead the conference by leaps and bounds if he qualified, as the current leader is Kenneth Roberts at Middle Tennessee with a 3.12 ERA.

LINE SCORE

Louisiana 12, New Orleans 5 (May 15, 2009 at New Orleans, La.)

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Louisiana........... 032 050 200  - 12 14  1      (24-28-1, 13-15 Sun Belt)

New Orleans......... 000 200 021  -  5  9  3      (22-32, 12-17 Sun Belt)

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Pitchers: Louisiana - Robichaux, Justin; Wagley, Luke(8). New Orleans - Zimmermann,J;

Pivach, J.(5); Cromartie,J.(8); Sanford, T.(9).

Win-Robichaux, Justin(2-3)  Loss-Zimmermann,J(3-4)  T-2:42  A-274

HR UL - Keefer, Chad (7).

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