Dowell earns hitting honor
Easton Dowell earned hitting award from Southland Conference this week. (Kirk Meche/Special to American Press)
For the second straight week, and third time overall, McNeese State has won a Player of the Week award in baseball.
Easton Dowell, the Southland Conference's leading hitter at .431, earned Hitter of the Week honors Monday, the league announced. That comes a week after center fielder Conner Westenburg picked up the same award.
Left-hander Alexis Grevel won the Pitcher of the Week honor earlier in the season.
Dowell had a big weekend as the Cowboys took two of three from Texas A&M-Corpus Christi to move into a tie for first place with Southeastern, a half game ahead of Texas-Rio Grande Valley.
The redshirt sophomore shortstop was 8-for-12 (.750) and hit his sixth home run during the three-game series at Joe Miller Ballpark. He also had three doubles and drove in four runs.
'Easton has been an outstanding player for us all season,' said Hill. 'We feel good when he is at the plate. He puts a good swing on the ball most of the time.'
Dowell was 3-for-3 in the series finale Saturday, a 3-1 victory.
The Cowboys will open a showdown series with UTRGV Friday night in Texas. However, before that, McNeese will host Louisiana Christian on Tuesday at 6 p.m.
Parker Morgan (1-1) will make his seventh start for McNeese. The Wildcats (23-23) have lost six straight games.
'We have business to take care of first on Tuesday,' said McNeese head coach Justin Hill.
The Cowboys captured the series against the Islanders thanks to Sergio Lopez and Jake Blackwell. The two pitchers combined to hold down the Islanders just 24 hours after they had hit five home runs.
The duo allowed just one run and five hits as they split Saturday's outing.
The win gave the Cowboys (29-7, 16-5) their fifth straight Southland Conference series victory and sixth in seven weekends.
'You want to sweep, but you know you are not going to win them all,' said Hill. 'What you have to do is win the series.'
Lopez helped them do that. Making his first start of the season, and pitching for the first time in four weeks after an injury, Lopez didn't miss a beat.
Lopez pitched 4⅓ innings, allowing three hits while striking out five. He left on a pitch count and picked up the win to improve to 5-1.
'We were hoping to get two innings out of him, but he did more,' said Hill.
Blackwell went the final 4⅔ innings to earn his third save. Blackwell's only mistake was a home run hit by Jarrett Flaggert, who blasted his third of the year and second in as many days in the sixth to cut the lead to 2-1.
Conner Westenburg and Conner Schneider each added two hits for the Cowboys.
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