Colonels’ Season Comes to a Close with 3-0 Loss to Tulane

After racking up 14 hits in the regional opener on Friday, the No. 3 seed Nicholls State University baseball team was limited to four hits against No. 4 seed Tulane as the Colonels were eliminated from the Corvallis Regional with a 3-0 loss Saturday afternoon at Goss Stadium at Coleman Field.

Nicholls ends the season with a 38-22 overall record and falls to 0-10 all-time in the NCAA Regional in the D1 era. The 38 wins are tied for the third most in a single season as a D1 program, matching the win total from 1984.

With the victory, Tulane (36-25) pushes its winning streak against Nicholls to five games, which includes three victories this year, and will play the loser of Saturday night’s game between Oregon State and UC Irvine.

Michael Quevedo had a strong showing on the mound despite being tagged with his first loss of the season. He matched his season-high of 7.1 innings with two runs on five hits and struck out two. However, Tulane’s Luc Fladda shutout the Colonels through eight innings before Jacob Moore came in and tossed a perfect ninth for the save.

Kaden Amundson accounted for two of the Colonels’ four hits, doubling in the fifth before leading off the eighth with a single. MaCrae Kendrick had a two-out infield single in the second while Basiel Williams tallied the other hit to leadoff the seventh.

Tulane had seven hits in the victory and was able to manufacture a run in the second, fifth and ninth innings. Gavin Schulz led off the second with a base hit, stole second, and after moving to third on a sacrifice bunt, scored on a groundout for the early lead.

The Green Wave added to its advantage in the fifth on an RBI single by Mattias Haas. Jackson Linn pushed the final run across with a two-out base hit in the ninth.

The Colonels had just one strikeout at the plate but could never get anything going against Fladda. The biggest threat came in the seventh and eighth innings when Williams and Amundson led off with singles. Williams was left stranded on first while Amundson was part of a first-to-short double play. For the final out of the game, Williams sent a towering shot to right field but Ben Romano made a leaping catch at the wall to seal the win.

Although Edgar Alvarez did not reach base for the first time this season, the Southland Player of the Year became the first Colonel to finish with a .400 batting average in over 60 years. His 92 hits is the second-most for a single-season all-time as he posted a .405 average for the year.