USM took down Auburn on Saturday

Story from USM Athletics:

AUBURN, Ala. – Dustin Dickerson homered twice, and Billy Oldham covered 5 2/3 strong innings to lead No. 2 seed Southern Miss over No. 1 seed Auburn 7-2 Saturday afternoon in the NCAA Auburn Regional at Plainsman Park.

The Golden Eagles (42-18) will advance to Sunday’s 2 p.m., contest against the loser of the Penn-Samford contest slated for later in the evening. Auburn, the No. 13 national seed, saw its season end at 34-23-1.

“Yesterday, we saw terrific pitching and defense and we missed out on the timely hitting,” said Southern Miss coach Scott Berry. “Today, we saw a combination of everything that we needed to win against an Auburn team. So I’m very proud of the way our guys competed and the sense of urgency knowing our backs were against the wall.”

That timely hitting started for the Golden Eagles in the first as they jumped out to a 3-0 advantage. Matthew Etzel opened the game by reaching base on a fielding error by the Tigers first baseman who mishandled the grounder. After a strikeout and a walk, Christopher Sargent laced a Tommy Vail 1-0 pitch to the opposite field that just got over the right field wall for his 13th homer of the year.

Dickerson then hit solo home runs in both the third and fifth innings off Vail to increase the lead to 5-0 against the regional host. Dickerson, who has now homered four times in the last eight games, has eight on the season.

Southern Miss strung together three straight singles in the sixth by Danny Lynch, Nick Monistere and Carson Paetow, before extending the lead to 6-0 on a sacrifice fly by Rodrigo Montenegro.

Meanwhile, Oldham kept the Tigers off balanced for the first five-plus innings, retiring 15 of 16 at one point, before Auburn strung together three straight singles with the last one form Chris Stanfield driving in a run. Oldham was replaced by Nick Armistead who gave up an RBI single to Cooper McMurray.

Armistead then got a ground ball from Kason Howell, whose grounder was snagged by Monistere at second and flipped to Dickerson for the force out to end the threat.

Oldham finished by allowing two runs on four hits with two walks and a strikeout to earn the victory and improve to 7-3. Armistead threw the final 3 1/3 innings and allowed no runs on five hits with two walks and three strikeouts to earn his first save.

Danny Lynch also added an eighth-inning homer to increase the lead as it was Lynch’s 12th of the season. The Golden Eagles now have 82 home runs as a team this season and now have collected at least 80 home runs in each of the last three seasons. That is the first time in the school’s history that has happened.

Vail, who gave up five runs (four earned) on four hits with two walks and four strikeouts to suffer the loss and fall to 5-2.