One night ago under the lights, it was heartbreak for Maryland baseball following a ninth-inning disaster. Less than 24 hours later, the hard times continued, as they were steamrolled by Louisiana, 9-1.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just lost today\u2026 that\u2019s just baseball sometimes, you know, I told the guys we didn\u2019t do a good job necessarily, taking something away from the starter,\u201d said Swope. \u201cAnd sometimes you got to give him credit. He was good today \u2026 I like the way we finished. The last three innings kind of built it up, kept fighting. [And] that\u2019s who we got to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was an afternoon of near perfection for the Ragin\u2019 Cajuns, who won their first series of 2026. Left-handed starter Andrew Herrmann dominated with a six and one-third inning performance of two hits, one run, three walks and seven strikeouts on 116 pitches.<\/p>\n
Saturday was the lefty graduate\u2019s best start of the season. He rebounded from a week ago, when he walked five batters and gave up two runs against Missouri State.<\/p>\n
The Terps only found offense from sophomore catcher Rylen Stockton, who delivered his second long ball of the season in the seventh inning. The newcomer is now up to a .389 average through six games. Outside of Stockton and his 2-for-4 day at the plate, the Terps combined to record three hits.<\/p>\n
Louisiana has won three games in a row, and its offense was hot in contrast to the Terps on Saturday \u2014 with 11 hits, nine RBIs, eight walks and just three batters retired on strikes.<\/p>\n
Terps freshman starter Nic Morlang made his second start. He kept things clean with scoreless pitching until the fourth inning. He surrendered six hits, four earned runs and two walks in 55 pitches. The next phase in the young pitcher\u2019s game to develop is getting over the hump down the stretch in outings.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t necessarily discouraged by the effort or anything like that. I thought Nic did a good job. Just kind of let things compound in that [fourth] inning,\u201d Swope said. \u201cWe talked about trying to limit all that stuff. So I think today is more just a case that we [as a team] lost.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last week, in his debut against UNC Wilmington, Morlang\u2019s momentum stalled in the third inning. This week, it was the fourth frame. Morlang, who is 0-2 to start the year, was only able to record one punch out in three innings of work against Louisiana. The Terps then had to rely on a struggling bullpen.<\/p>\n
On Friday, Swope tried to stretch reliever Cristofer Cespedes to four innings of relief work. He had built himself to four strikeouts, but then came an implosion of six earned runs and four free passes given from the bullpen.<\/p>\n
One Saturday ago, Maryland had to use five relief arms. This time around, appearances weren\u2019t erratic, but in the blowout, the staff gave up four runs and six walks. One standout was freshman left-handed reliever Case Gibbs, who went an inning and \u2154, allowing one hit and two strikeouts.<\/p>\n
In the series finale, Maryland\u2019s Sunday pitching plans and lineup will have to step up \u2014 the Terps will look to avoid a sweep for the first time since playing Illinois in April 2025.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just told them we got to do whatever we can to salvage the series. Good teams sweep and they don\u2019t get swept,\u201d Swope added. \u201cSo it\u2019s just one of those things, we got to come out and get a win.\u201d<\/p>\n
1. New adversity. After a 3-1 start, the Terps find themselves 0-2 in Louisiana. On Sunday, they will look to salvage a series after facing their first tall task in their non-conference schedule.<\/p>\n
2. Pitching troubles. Outside of right-hander Lance Williams, Maryland\u2019s pitching staff has struggled. They have given up 10 total runs and walks across Friday and Saturday.<\/p>\n
3. Bud Coombs\u2019 return. Freshman Bud Coombs returned Saturday in a substitution opportunity for the Terps. This came one week after he left Maryland\u2019s Feb. 14 doubleheader against UNC Wilmington with an ankle injury.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One night ago under the lights, it was heartbreak for Maryland baseball following a ninth-inning disaster. Less than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":586514,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2290],"tags":[5,39046,62182],"class_list":{"0":"post-586513","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-baseball","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-maryland-baseball","10":"tag-maryland-olympic-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116114345405102762","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=586513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/586514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}