Lake Charles, LA - Lamar ran up an early lead and went on to a 13-5  rain delayed Southland Conference baseball victory over McNeese State at Cowboy Diamond Sunday.

    The win came in the final game of the teams three game series and gave the Cardinals a 2-1 upper hand.

    Sunday’s game featured an hour long rain delay and rain began to fall again during the closing inning.

    The victory put the Cardinals record at 32-18 for the season and 16-11 in conference play while McNeese fell to 20-25 overall and to 9-18 in the conference. The Cowboys are now three and one half games out of eighth place in the SLC standings, that being spot being the final berth in the league’s post season tournament.

    Lamar scored 11 of its 13 runs in the first four innings, holding an 11-0 edge over the Cowboys through four.  McNeese came up with three in the fifth and two in the seventh but couldn’t make a full comeback.  The Cardinals tallied two more runs in the top of the ninth.

    Between them the teams smacked out 35 hits.  Cowboy centerfielder Sam Merrill had a perfect day as he was five for five at the plate with a pair of doubles and three singles.

    All of the Lamar batters had at least one hit in the game and all but two McNeese batters collected a hit.

    Cowboy starter and loser Jordan LeGros had trouble from the start as he allowed a double and single to the first two batters he faced and then later gave up a home run to Chris Dunkin, the Cardinals scoring three runs in that opening inning.

    Lamar came back with two in the second and third and then four in the fourth.  Andy Mena highlighted the four run fourth for the Cardinals with a three run homer.

    McNeese got on the board with three runs in the fifth.  Merrill led things off with a single, went to second on a wild pitch and scored on a double by Lee Orr.  Taylor Freeman then doubled in Orr and Freeman went on to score on a Lamar error.

    In the seventh the Cowboys got their final two runs with Andy Riche’ singling in Ryan Brauninger and Merrill singling in Matt Fontenot.

    The Cowboys left 12 runners stranded while Lamar left nine.

    LeGros hurled two innings, giving up eight hits and seven earned runs.  He was followed to the mound by Tommy Luce (two innings, six hits and four runs), Scott Holstein (2.1 innings, no hits and no runs) and Travis Bailey (2.2 innings, five hits and two runs).

    Holstein had been on the mound when the rain delay came and Bailey took over when the contest got re-started.

    Ricky Testa got the victory for the Cardinals, hurling six innings and giving up 13 hits but only three runs.  James Brandhorst came on following the delay and was ineffective,giving up two hits and two runs. Cory Holley finished the game giving up only one hit over 2.2 innings.

    Testa lifted his record to 5-3 while LeGros absorbed his second setback.

    Merrill led the Cowboys with his five hits while Fontenot was three for five and Orr and Freeman both had two hits.

    Tyler Link, Brian Taylor, Steven Tucker and Mena all had three hits each for Lamar.