Lake Charles, LA - McNeese State evened its Southland Conference series with Lamar here Saturday afternoon with an 8-4 victory as Matt Click and Jonathan Conrad teaming up on the pitching mound.

    The win snapped a seven game Cowboy losing streak and kept them in the running for a berth in the league’s post season tournament.  The two teams play the third game in their series at Cowboy Diamond on Sunday beginning at 11 a.m.

    McNeese is now 20-24 overall and 9-17 in league play while Lamar is 31-18 and 15-11.

    Click started the game and went 6.1 innings before giving way to Conrad who hurled the final 2.2 innings.  Click got the win which evened his record at 2-2 and Conrad got the save, his first of the year.

    “We got two good outings from Click and Conrad,” said Cowboy head coach Terry Burrows, “and that was really the key.”

    Click gave up nine hits and three runs (both earned) while walking five and striking out six during his stint on the mound.  Conrad came on to give up but two hits and one run while striking out two and walking one in his appearance.

    While Click and Conrad were handling the Lamar batters, the McNeese batters handled the Cardinal pitchers.  Lamar sent three hurlers to the mound and they gave up 12 hits to the Cowboys.

    Burrows said that he thought his players did a much better job at the plate of laying off the bad pitches in the game.

    Lamar had opened the contest  with a run in the third inning on a solo home run by Brian Taylor.  The Cowboys came back to tie the game with one in the fourth when after one was out Jace Peterson singled up the middle, took second on a balk, stole third and came home on a single to left by Andy Riche’.

    McNeese added another run and took the lead in the fifth inning.  Steven Irvine doubled down the line and scored on a single by Ryan Brauninger who had two RBIs in the game.

    Lamar tied it up again with a single run in the sixth but then the Cowboys took the lead for good with two runs in the bottom of the inning.  Sam Merrill singled in Matt Fontenot and Irvine singled in Alex Johnson.

    The Cowboys put the Cardinals away with four runs in the bottom of the eighth on four hits.  Taylor Freeman singled in two runs, Brauninger singled in a run and Fontenot singled in a run.

    Irvine, Brauninger, Peterson, Fontenot and Riche’ all had two hits for the Cowboys while Taylor had three safeties to lead Lamar.

     Madison Smith, who started for the Cardinals and went five innings, was the loser.  He walked six and struckout four.  Also seeing pitching duty in relief were Brian Needham (2.1 innings, 5 hits, 5 runs) and Taylor McInnis (0.2 innings, two hits).

    The Cowboys will turn to righthander Jordan LeGros for Sunday’s finale. 

    “We set our goal to come out and win this series and hopefully LeGros can come in tomorrow and do that for us,” Burrows added.