Georgia Southern baseball team holds off Mercer

It looked like Mercer All-American Kyle Lewis had come through with a walk-off home run Tuesday night at Claude Smith Field.

But that was just a long strike as the ball went foul off Lewis' bat in the ninth inning, and the junior ended up with a groundout to move the tying run to third base. The Bears then failed to get that home with just one out, and Georgia Southern's baseball team pulled out an 11-10 win.

Mercer has dropped five straight games to fall to 9-8, while Georgia Southern has won five straight and 10 out of 11 to improve to 12-5.

FOUR WHO MATTERED

Ryan Hagan: The Bears' second baseman had two hits, two runs scored and one RBI.

Danny Edgeworth: The Bears' third baseman had two RBI and two runs scored and hit his third home run in two games.

Evan McDonald: The Eagles' No. 9 hitter went 3-for-4 with his first career home run and walked once.

Ryan Cleveland: The Eagles' first baseman crushed a home run to right field to finish with three RBI.

OBSERVATIONS

In the clutch: Seven of Georgia Southern's runs came with two outs.

Missed chances: The Bears could have had many more runs, but they left 13 runners on base. They were 5-for-25 with runners on base and 4-for-18 with runners in scoring position.

Plenty of Ks: The teams combined for 28 strikeouts, 14 for both teams.

Patient at plate: The teams combined for 19 walks, eight for the Eagles and 11 for the Bears.

WORTH MENTIONING

Wearing out the arms: The teams combined to throw 396 pitches, 213 for the Eagles and 183 for the Bears. Mercer used nine pitchers.

THEY SAID IT

Mercer head coach Craig Gibson on the loss: "I thought our hitters fought all night (Tuesday). We got behind early, and we've got some young arms, but we've got to pitch a little better early to give us a chance. To give up two in the first against a good club, it's hard. We played catch up for a lot. Credit to our guys. We fought, we fought, we fought. We came back, and we had a chance in the ninth."

Georgia Southern head coach Rodney Hennon on the win: “I was happy that we got the win (Tuesday), but neither team played clean. It was one of those games where you've got to hang in there, and we were fortunate to hang in there and score one more than them. We’ve been playing with some confidence recently, but we’ve got a lot of work to do. We’ve got to clean some things up so we can get back to playing good baseball.”

WHAT'S NEXT?

Georgia Southern hosts Troy on Friday, while Mercer plays Friday at Kennesaw State.

This story was originally published March 15, 2016 at 10:21 PM with the headline "Georgia Southern baseball team holds off Mercer ."