SUGAR LAND, Texas – The fourth-seeded McNeese State baseball team was unable to overcome a five-run attack in the early part of Wednesday evening's Southland Conference Tournament first-round contest and dropped a 5-1 decision to fifth-seeded Sam Houston State at Constellation Field in Sugar Land, Texas.
 
The Cowboys (32-24) will look to regain momentum during Thursday afternoon's contest with No. 1 seeded Southeastern Louisiana. The Pokes must pick up a win against the Lions in the elimination game to be able to move on in the tournament. The contest is slated to begin at noon.
 
"I thought that their pitcher was really good for them tonight and I thought that Kaleb Fontenot also did good tonight," said head coach Justin Hill. "They snuck some hits in even though they really didn't hit the ball that hard. We had some mistakes and we paid for it that let them have the big inning. That is baseball sometimes but we have to be able to put some pressure on them like we did towards the end of the game."
 
Tomorrow's contest will be carried live by ESPN3. It is accessible online at WatchESPN.com, on smartphones and tablets via the WatchESPN app and streamed on televisions through Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick, Apple TV, Chromecast, Roku, Xbox 360 and Xbox One. 
 
The contest will also be featured on Cajun Radio-1470 AM in Lake Charles and online at CajunRadio.com, with Bruce Merchant on the call.
 
Sam Houston State (29-26) advanced into the winner's bracket with the victory and will meet eighth-seed Texas A&M-Corpus Christi Thursday at 7 p.m.
 
The games was the seventh all-time meeting between the two teams during league tournament play as the Bearkats have now taken five straight meetings from the Pokes.
  
Junior starting pitcher Kaleb Fontenot (7-4) was tagged with the loss after having tossed 6.2 innings and surrendered five runs off of 11 hits and a walk while fanning three batters.
 
"I thought Kaleb was really good on the mound tonight," said Hill. "For the most part, he was keeping it off of the barrel. Following Sam Houston State's big inning, he only allowed them to barrel it up three times after and was great in really critical situations. The biggest thing that he did for us was save our bullpen. He was really effective despite the one inning."
 
Despite a rocky start during the early going, Fontenot was able to settle down and allowed just three hits in the next 4.2 innings of work and gave up no runs in the process.

Designated hitter Billy Sommers led the McNeese offense with two hits on the night including the team's only RBI in the game. Left fielder Lewis Guilbeau also collected his 17^th multiple-hit game of the season with two during the contest. In total, McNeese collected eight hits in the game.
 
Following a leadoff groundout, the Bearkats were able to produce back-to-back singles before a hard-hit single allowed two runs to score for Sam Houston State to take the early advantage.
 
The Kats continued its offensive surge on the next play after a triple allowed two more runs to score and give Sam Houston State a four-run lead over the Pokes.
 
One more run was tacked on with two outs in the inning that abled the Bearkats to extend its lead over McNeese to a 5-0 score. 
 
The Cowboys sparked a little offense in the final inning that was led off by Matt Gallier's triple deep into right center and was followed up by an RBI-single from Sommers that cut the lead to four runs.