Auburn falls flat against Penn, faces Regional elimination game on Saturday
AUBURN — Auburn baseball’s nine-game Regional winning streak came to an end on Friday night.
In a 6-3 victory over top-seeded Auburn on Friday at Plainsman Park, fourth-seeded Penn scored three runs in the 11th inning to send the Tigers into an elimination game against 2-seed Southern Miss on Saturday at 2 p.m. CT.
3-seed Samford defeated Southern Miss in 10 innings earlier in the day on Friday. Samford and Penn will play in the winner’s bracket game on Saturday evening at 8 p.m.CT.
Interestingly enough, Samford scored three runs in the 10th inning to upset Southern Miss, while Penn scored three runs in the 11th inning to upset Auburn in back-to-back games to start the Auburn Regional.
Auburn falls to 34-22-1 on the season. Looking ahead for perspective, an Auburn loss on Saturday will mark the fourth time in six tries the program fails to win its own Regional.
- Auburn was outhit 12-4 in the game.
- Two of Auburn’s three runs were courtesy of bases loaded walks by Penn pitchers, while the other run was the result of a groundout to third with the bases loaded.
- Penn scored their three runs in the 11th inning off a RBI double following a walk, a bunt single, a RBI sacrifice bunt, and another RBI bunt single out front of the catcher. Three consecutive Penn batters laid down a bunt resulting in two runs for the Quakers.
- Chase Allsup struck out a career high 7 batters for the Tigers in five innings of work.
- Penn pitchers recorded 14 strikeouts against Auburn hitters on the night.
- 10 of Auburn’s 14 strikeouts came from the 1-5 hitters in the lineup. Ike Irish was responsible for two of the Tigers’ four hits.
- After winning nine straight games (all SEC) to end the season, Auburn has now lost three straight games, two straight to be eliminated in the SEC Tournament and the opener of the Regional.
- Penn improved their overall winning streak to nine games.
- Nationally, three Regional host teams lost their first game, as Coastal Carolina and Oklahoma State join Auburn as host teams losing their first game of the tournament.
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AUBURN COACH BUTCH THOMPSON’S FULL OPENING STATEMENT FOLLOWING THE LOSS:
“I’m reminded that true success is defined with effort and process and not results, and I thought I got great effort from our ball club tonight. I thought our pitching staff just kind of held us at bay, until right there at the end and had a couple chances. I thought (Chase) Allsup and (Tanner) Bauman, you know there at the end and (Will) Cannon always gives us everything he has. I thought that was in shape. I thought that (Ryan) Dromboski was amazing tonight, and Penn was resilient. We kind of pride ourselves on being a mentally tough team and I give all the credit in the world to Penn, their ball club. We knew they had a high-level pitching staff and it showed when we went to the pen, and the quality of arms that kept coming at us.
“And then, we just didn’t get enough hits, we were three for twenty-five for the first six guys and then four for whatever in the ball game here. And when we did hit a ball hard, it just didn’t seem to happen tonight. (Chris) Stanfield in the first and Stanfield on the bases were loaded after we tied the game in the eighth, and it would have been nice to find some grass there. Kason (Howell) in the tenth on the back side with the double play there, and it was exactly the approach he was supposed to try to put on the baseball. But I thought offensively we were not resilient and couldn’t link up enough offensively to keep pace with a very quality Penn game. So, we got to bounce and get back out here tomorrow and understand that this is all about tomorrow. We tried to invest as much as we could to make today important. We will have to do the same thing and try to fight our hearts out to get here on Sunday, and that is kind of the next step for us.”
PENN COACH JOHN YURKOW OPENING STATEMENT FOLLOWING THEIR WIN:
“Obviously a great win for this program tonight. We had some moments there where I thought our guys could have given in, but they just kept fighting especially after we gave it up late. It was a credit to how hard they work. How tough they are. They really hung together. We talked about that yesterday in a meeting. There might be some spots where things get a little sticky and sometimes you have to dig in. I’m really proud of how they pulled together and did that.”
