BATON ROUGE – The Louisiana College baseball team's visit to Alex Box Stadium went better than most likely expected. The NCAA Division III Wildcats competed with LSU, the No. 7 team in the NCAA Division I, for nine innings but fell 10-2 thanks to a pair of bad innings.

“It was an amazing experience,” sophomore pitcher Madison Lachney (Iowa, La./Iowa HS) said. “Every little boy growing up in Louisiana wants to play at the box. It was great to be one of the few who get to actually do it.”

Lachney pitched the sixth and seventh innings, a stretch during which he struck out one and allowed one hit.

Senior Dustin Fulks (Simpson, La./Simpson HS) kept the Tigers at bay in the first two innings of the game allowing one run on one hit with a strike out and a pair of walks.

“It was a great night,” Fulks said. “Not too many get this chance so this was an honor for all of us. It stinks that we lost but we competed the whole night and I think this is a good place to build from as we get back into conference play.”

Offensively, LC was good for two runs on four hits, those hits coming from Cole Bagbey (Monroe, La./Sterlington HS), Matt Scott (Pineville, La./Pineville HS), Taylor Beavers (Georgetown, La./Tioga HS) and Adam Broussard (Nederland, Texas/Nederland HS).

The Wildcats took a 1-0 lead in the top of the first after leadoff man Bagbey reached on a single. He moved to second on a balk by pitcher Cody Glenn then to third and home on consecutive groundouts by Scott and Jordan Marks (Alexandria, La./Holy Savior Menard).

LC held LSU scoreless in the first but the Tigers were able to tie the game at 1-1 in the bottom of the second on a sacrifice fly RBI by Evan Powell.

LSU took the lead in the bottom of the third with four runs on six hits and one error, a run sparked when Arby Fields reached on a single, stole second, was moved to third on a bunt single and sent home on a single to right field by Alex Edward.

The Wildcats cut into that lead in the top of the fourth when Mike Doughty (Crowley, La./Crowley HS), who reached on a walk, scored on a groundout by Cary Myers (Zachary, La./Zachary HS) but LC scored another run in the fourth and four more in the fifth to pull away for good.

“It was a loss but we were still pleased, overall, with how we competed,” Lachney said. “It's a confidence booster going into the stretch run of the season. If we can compete with the No. 7 team in the country, we should be able to compete with anybody.”