MONTGOMERY, Ala. – Nearly a year to the day of a legendary performance on the mound, it was Blake Marshall’s turn to etch his name into Louisiana Ragin’ Cajuns Baseball lore.
After earning the save with 4.0 innings of shutout ball in a 7-3 win over top-seeded Coastal Carolina, the junior southpaw came back in the nightcap with a masterful 5.1 scoreless innings of relief to earn his third win of the season and lead Louisiana to a 4-1 win over the No. 7-ranked Chanticleers in the 2023 Guardian Credit Sun Belt Conference Baseball Championship on Saturday at Riverwalk Stadium.
Next up for Louisiana – a return trip to the Championship game where it will face No. 16-ranked Southern Miss (40-17) in the winner-take-all contest at 1 p.m. The game will be streamed live on ESPN+.
Louisiana (40-21), which also reached the 40-win mark for the first time since 2016, navigated its way through the Loser’s Bracket after dropping a 6-3 decision to Coastal (39-19) on Thursday.
The Ragin’ Cajuns, who defeated Coastal Carolina in the opening game of a three-game series last month in Lafayette, joined Clemson as the only teams to earn multiple wins over the Chanticleers this season.
Marshall (3-1), who threw 63 pitches in the afternoon contest before tossing an 84-pitch masterpiece in the nightcap, replaced starter Jackson Nezuh in the fourth after the right-hander limited the Chanticleers to a pair of hits with two strikeouts in 3.0 innings pitched.
The Mandeville, La., native, whose gutsy performance was nearly identical to Jacob Schultz’s complete-game, 142-pitch outing against Texas State on May 28, 2022, immediately struck out the side in the fourth and kept the Chanticleers without a hit until Ty Dooley’s single in the eighth inning. Marshall then induced a 4-6-3 double play and got Nick Lucky to ground back to the mound to halt Coastal’s biggest threat in the game.
Louisiana took a 1-0 lead in the first inning as Carson Roccaforte homered to right field off Chanticleer starter Will Smith (4-2) before Coastal tied the game in the third on Lucky’s RBI double to right.
The Ragin’ Cajuns would regain the lead in the bottom half of the third after Will Veillon reached on a one-out double to left, moved to third on Max Marusak’s single and scored on Kyle DeBarge’s sacrifice fly to left.
Louisiana continued its two-out prowess in the postseason when it scored a pair of runs in the sixth to take a 4-1 lead.
Bryce Shaffer – the second of three pitchers used by Coastal Carolina – retired the first two batters in the inning before Julian Brock singled up the middle and moved to second when Heath Hood drew a walk. The pair would score one batter later when John Taylor hit a ball to the left-field wall.
JT Etheridge retired both batters he faced in the ninth to earn his second career save in as many days for Louisiana. CJ Willis added a single for the Ragin’ Cajuns, who outhit the Chanticleers, 6-4.
