Final Stats BATON ROUGE, La. – Down by one and held scoreless for six innings, the Nicholls State University baseball team tied the game in the bottom of the ninth on a sacrifice fly by Leo Vargas to knot the game at three, but the Brown Bears scored two runs in the 12th while Nicholls got one as the Colonels fell 5-4 in extra innings Saturday afternoon in Baton Rouge.

With the loss the Colonels fall to 6-4 on the season, losing a second-straight game for the first time all season, while Brown improves to 1-1 after dropping its season opener to LSU last night 4-3.

Down 3-2 since the second inning, the Colonels were finally able to put a decent run together that began with a David Zorn walk to open the final frame. After stealing second, pinch hitter Adam Seal singled to the first baseman putting runners at the corners with no outs. Vargas, who finished the game hitless, hit a deep fly ball to centerfield scoring Zorn and tie the game at 3-3.

Up until that point, Brown (0-0) starter Dave St. Lawrence seemed untouchable after giving up runs in back-to-back innings, but exited after going 8.1 innings in the no decision. At that point Nicholls starter Mike Suk was off of the hook for the loss after giving up three runs on eight hits with two walks and five strikeouts in just five innings.

Matt Richard scored the first run of the game in the bottom of the first, as Richard finished the day 2-for-5 with a run scored, as he and Tyler Duplantis were the only Colonels to garner multiple hits on the day, as Philip Lyons and Seth Stevens had the only extra base hits for Nicholls on the day. Lyons hit his seventh double of the season in the third, while Stevens belted Nicholls' fourth home run of the year in the second as the last run for Nicholls until the ninth.

Marc Picciola came on and pitched three solid innings getting three strikeouts leading the way to Jacob Rodrigue (0-1) who pitched the final four innings of the game, and looked solid until the 12th when Brown got three singles in the inning to score two runs to go up 5-3 and wound up with the loss giving up two runs on four hits with a walk and four strikeouts.

The Colonels tried to put together some late inning magic in the bottom half of the inning, as Vargas scored after getting on base with an error by the third baseman. After advancing to second on a wild pitch, a grounder by Richard put the junior on third. Staring down a hitless afternoon, Mike Barba singled to third base scoring Vargas and keeping just an out on the board. However, the last two batters went down on strikeouts to end the game and preserve the Bear win.

Eddie Fitzpatrick (1-0), a 6-6 righty, pitched the final two innings for Brown, giving up just a run on a hit with four strikeouts to earn the win. Nicholls was able to capitalize on three Bear errors in the contest, getting two unearned runs from them, as Nicholls had just one in the ballgame.

Nicholls returns to action on Sunday morning, facing Brown again at 11 a.m. before taking on LSU tomorrow afternoon at 3 p.m.