What You Need to Know
* Georgia Southern evened the series with 4-3 win Friday.
* The two teams will meet Saturday at 2 p.m. in the regular-season finale.
* Seven Georgia State seniors will be honored in pregame ceremonies.
ATLANTA -- Georgia State fell 4-3 to Georgia Southern Friday night at the GSU Baseball Complex, evening the Sun Belt Conference series. The two teams will meet Saturday at 2 p.m. in the regular-season finale.
Georgia State enters Saturday's game with a record 29-24, 15-12 in the Sun Belt and in fifth place, while Georgia Southern is in fourth place at 29-25, 17-12 in the Sun Belt. With several other Sun Belt games postponed by rain on Friday, seeding for next week's conference tournament is still to be determined, but the winner of tomorrow's game will finish above the loser.
Georgia Southern's Hunter Thomas hit a two-run homer to tie the game in the top of the seventh, and then the Eagles scored the winning run on Kody Adams' run-scoring double in the seventh.
The Panthers had a chance to tie or take the lead with runners at first and second and two outs in the ninth and Matt Rose at the plate. Rose hit a long fly ball to left that was caught at the warning track for the final out.
"It was a tough game to lose, but it was a great college baseball game," head coach Greg Frady said. "Last night we got the hit we needed, tonight we didn't get it. We missed some opportunities early in the game that we just could not execute offensively. When you're in a game like this with opportunities to pop it open, you have to get that done."
Senior Caden Bailey drove in two runs for the Panthers with an RBI-groundout in the first inning and a sacrifice fly in the fifth that put Georgia State ahead 3-0. David Levy delivered a two-out, run-scoring single in the second inning for his fourth RBI of the series.
Georgia State senior left-hander Kenny Anderson tunred in a quality start, allowing three runs on seven hits in 6.1 innings but did not figure in the decision. Freshman reliever Logan Barnette (3-1) suffered his first loss.
Georgia Southern reliever Ryan Frederick (3-1) earned the victory with 1.2 scoreless innings, and Chris Brown pitched a scoreless ninth for his league-leading 11th save.
Seven Georgia State seniors will be honored before Saturday's game, with pregame ceremonies beginning at 1:40 p.m.
