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JACKSON, Tenn. – Eastern Kentucky, the No. 5 seed, beat fourth seeded Jacksonville State, 11-2, in the first round of the 2013 Ohio Valley Conference Baseball Tournament on Wednesday.

The No. 5 seeded Colonels will face No. 2 seed Austin Peay at 4 p.m. ET on Thursday.  The Governors won two of three earlier this season in Richmond.

The Colonels (21-32) had 18 hits on their way to snapping a six-game OVC Tournament losing streak.

A pair of 3-run home runs bookended Eastern Kentucky’s scoring.  Sean Hagen staked the Colonels to a 3-0 lead with a dinger in the third inning.  Luke Wurzelbacher capped it with a 3-run shot in the ninth inning.

Junior Brent Cobb (7-6) took care of business on the mound for EKU.  He scattered nine hits over eight innings, allowed two runs, walked two and struck out four. 

With one out and two on, Hagen sent a 2-0 pitch sailing over top of the 24-foot high left field wall.  Doug Teegarden and Kyle Nowlin scored.

A one-out, 2-run single to center by Nowlin in the fourth inning extended the lead to 5-0.  Austin Grisham slid into home ahead of the throw to score the second run.  Grisham drove in Alex Hughes on a ground ball in the fifth inning for a 6-0 advantage.

A day after being named OVC Rookie of the Year, Nowlin went 3-for-5 with a run and two RBIs.

The Gamecocks (32-25) closed the gap with a pair of runs in the bottom of the fifth.  JSU had four straight hits to start the inning, including back-to-back RBI singles by Gavin Golsan and Stephen Bartlett to make it 6-2.

Bryan Soloman led off the seventh inning with a home run to push the lead to five, 7-2.  Soloman followed a lead-off double by Hughes with an RBI single to start a 4-run ninth inning.  Wurzelbacher hit his 3-run dinger later in the inning.

Soloman was 3-for-5 with a run and two RBIs.  Wurzelbacher had two hits in three at bats, scored a run and drove in three.

Eddie Mora-Loera was 3-for-4 with a run scored for Jacksonville State.  Casey Antley (6-5) started for JSU, he allowed six runs on nine hits in four and one-third innings.

NOTES
Eastern Kentucky snapped a six-game OVC Tournament losing streak.  The win is the first since beating Murray State, 4-3, in the first round of the 2010 tournament.

The two teams combined for eight double plays, four each.

Sean Hagen had been 1-for-6 in his career in the OVC Tournament before blasting his third inning 3-run home run over the wall in left field.

Bryan Soloman’s home run in the seventh was his first career homer in the OVC Tournament.

Brent Cobb made his second-ever appearance in an OVC Tournament game.  He allowed one earned run in 1.1 innings of relief work in his only other appearance.

Eastern’s recent starting line-ups have featured four freshmen – Doug Teegarden (3B), Kyle Nowlin (LF), Kenny Hostrander (2B) and Luke Wurzelbacher (SS).

Luke Wurzelbacher has started 17 straight games and has hit safely in 12 of those.

Sean Hagen has reached base in 13 straight games.  The most by a Colonel this season is 15 straight.

In its last three games against Jacksonville State, Eastern has averaged 11.3 runs.

Earlier this season, Casey Antley gave up two runs on five hits in seven innings of work against Eastern Kentucky.  He walked two and struck out seven.  The Gamecocks won the game 9-4.