SU Jaguar baseball mince foes during break

While the students and faculty of Southern University enjoyed a week-long spring vacation, the Jaguar baseball team was hard at work making mincemeat of their competition.
In a span of nine days, the defending Southwestern Athletic Conference champions soundly defeated three SWAC teams to advance their record for the year to 23 wins, with only three losses.
“Once we get started we can’t be stopped,” said Southern head coach Roger Cador. “We take advantage of their mistakes.”
The Jaguars kicked off their winning streak, Saturday, March 23 in game one of a four-game series against Prairie View (1-27), with a 7-5 win. In game two, they only allowed two hits for two, while scoring twenty.
“We weren’t as prepared in the first as we were for the second game,” said Cador. “The first game served as a warm up for the second game.”
Making moves for Southern offensively, were Kevin Vital who continues to reap the benefits of batting after Rickie Weeks and Antoin Gray.
“It’s my job to get Rickie across home plate,” said Vital.
Gray combined for three solo-homeruns, in Saturday’s games.
“The pitches just came to me,” said Gray.
In Sunday’s doubleheader the Jaguars combined for 29 hits for 32 runs.
Many of those runs were due to Prairie View’s pitching staff’s inability to control the ball.
All-American Rickie Weeks, who possesses a .584 batting average, was hit four times in Sunday’s contests.
“The first time a pitcher hits a player, you base it on lack of control on the pitcher’s part,” said Cador. “But, when you hit the same player repeatedly, it’s get dangerous, especially when there is no reason to be attacking the player.”
Prairie View’s Larry Henderson was removed from the game for throwing a bat at Weeks in the second game.
In game one Josef Rankin got the win for the Jaguars, his second of the season. Rankin allowed six hits, four runs, walking none, with three strikeouts.
“Our pitchers really handle themselves well on the mound,” said Cador.
In their 17-1 victory in game two of Sunday’s outing, Joshua Kirk was credited with the win, the loss went to Prairie View’s Larry Henderson.
Henderson gave up six hits, nine runs allowing two errors and no strikeouts.
The Jaguars ended their spring break with a 21-9 win over Alcorn State University, Tuesday April 2, extending their winning streak to 16 games.
The Jaguars who were down by four at the end of three endings, got the bats cracking in the fourth inning with two doubles by Theo Dumas. With Gray finishing the rush off with two-run homer, to put the score at 15-6 Jaguar lead.
“Dumas really got us going,” said Cador.
Tuesday night’s game was cut short by agreement on the part of both teams, when the Jaguars scored four more runs in the top of the eighth.
The Jaguars will take on Texas Southern the only SWAC team to defeat Southern this season, April 6 and 7, at noon in Houston.