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Sports

Demons make scaredy-cats of Cougars

by RONNIE TURNER
The Daily Cougar

The UH baseball team must be cursed. It can't seem to shake its bad luck of making errors at crucial points of ballgames.

The Cougars took a two-run lead into the ninth inning of Sunday's series finale against Northwestern State, but were crippled by two late errors that left them on the losing end of a 6-5 extra inning decision at Cougar Field.

The first error was simply a mental error. With runners at second and third base and no outs in the top of the ninth, Houston reliever John Touchton (1-2) induced a popup to shallow left field from Justin O'Neal. 

Junior third baseman Bryan Pounds, senior shortstop Dustin Kingsbury and sophomore left fielder Jimmy Cesario all converged on the ball, but allowed it to fall in for a base hit that scored a run and cut Houston's lead to one. Knox McCorquodale followed with a RBI-single to tie the game at 5 and set the stage for extra innings.

The second error came when Pounds booted a grounder from Brandon Richey that allowed the leadoff batter to reach in the 10th. Richey later came around to score the game-winning run off of Dylan Libadisos' RBI-double.

The costly mistakes sent the Cougars (7-9) to their third loss in the last four games.

"I don't want to make excuses; we didn't deserve to win today," Kingsbury said. "We played like crap."

Alex Baboulas (1-0) picked up the victory after holding the Cougars scoreless over 1.1 innings, and Ryan Campbell sat the Cougars down in the 10th to earn his third save.

Lost in the fray was UH junior starter Aaron Brown, who posted one of his best outings to date. He tossed seven innings and gave up only two runs but didn't pick up enough support to earn his first victory in nearly a month.

Errors also destroyed the Cougars in an 8-2 loss to Northwestern State (6-9) on Saturday. 

Houston defeated the Demons 6-5 in the series opener Friday. 
 

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