Troy Drops 16-Inning Marathon at UALR

Friday, April 18

Little Rock, Ark.

6:00pm

Troy University

19-19, 6-9

UALR

15-20, 4-12

Troy

UALR

Photo by: Joshua Thurston

4/18/2014 11:46:00 PM | Baseball

Box Score

By: Adam Prendergast

Box Score

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – Bryson Thionnet hit a walk-off grand slam in the bottom of the 16^th inning to lift UALR past Troy 9-5 in the Sun Belt Conference series opener Friday night at Gary Hogan Field.

UALR loaded the bases thanks to three free passes from Troy pitchers and Thionnet, who was 0-for-6 with three strikeouts prior to that at-bat, hit an 0-1 offering from Levi Tate over the wall in left field.

It was Troy's first 16-inning game since April 25, 2007, when Beau Brooks hit a walk-off homer to give Troy a 5-4 victory over Auburn.

Troy (19-19, 6-9 Sun Belt), who has now dropped five straight series openers, jumped out to a 5-0 lead thanks to four runs in the first and one in the second.

David Hall opened the scoring with a bases-loaded grounder, Jo-El Bennett followed with a two-run single back up the middle and Matthew Howard added a single up the middle to plate another run.

In the second, Garrett Pitts doubled home Clay Holcomb after he was hit by a pitch and an error kept the inning alive. However, that would be the final run of the game for Troy as five UALR pitchers combined to keep Troy off the board over the final 14 innings of the game.

Pitts led all players with four hits, while Nick Masonia and Tyler Vaughn added two hits each. Austin Pfeiffer and Tanner Rockwell paced UALR with three hits.

UALR (15-20, 4-12) chipped away with three runs in the third inning and tied the game with two runs in the fifth. All five of the runs scored on something other than a base hit – three scored on groundouts, one on a wild pitch and another on a throw to first.

Marc Skinner pitched a wonderful game out of the Troy bullpen as he struck out a career-high 10 batters over eight innings of work. The freshman scattered five hits, walked two and did not allow a run. Ben Tidwell also gave Troy a pair of scoreless innings out of the pen.

Troy had its chances to win the game with runners in scoring position in the 12^th, 14^th, 15^th and 16^th innings, but couldn't capitalize against a trio of UALR hurlers.

Rockwell (1-2) picked up the win for UALR with 2.2 scoreless innings of relief. He struck out four and worked around a pair of walks and a hit. Jeremy McGowan (2-4) was charged with the loss for Troy after he walked two and struck out one to open the 16^th inning.

Ten pitchers combined to throw 476 pitches in a game that lasted four hours and 32 minutes.

The teams will play game two of the series Saturday at 4 p.m.