JACKSONVILLE – The Jacksonville State baseball team began the second half of the ASUN schedule with a 4-0 setback to Lipscomb on Friday evening at Rudy Abbott Field at Jim Case Stadium.

The Gamecocks dropped the 16-19 on the season and 9-7 in ASUN West Division contests, while the Bisons remained hot with 10th ASUN West Division win in a row and improved to 23-15 overall. The two clubs will meet in the second game of the weekend set on Saturday evening at 6 p.m. Tickets are available online at JSUGamecockSports.com and JSU students and fans 18 years old and younger are admitted free. The game will be streamed on ESPN+ and carried on the Gamecock Sports Network.

It was a night that the Gamecock offense could not get going and a lot of that had to do with the pitching performance by LU's Michael Dunkelberger. He tossed seven of the nine shutout innings and scattered seven hits in the outing. He found ways to get out of jams with JSU hitting in to two of the three double plays on the evening while he was on the mound. Matthew Bohnert pitched the final twp frames and thwarted a Jax State rally in the ninth as he induce a game-ending double play after two Gamecocks reached with one out in the inning.

The shutout was the first time JSU had been held scoreless in 48 games dating back to the Troy contest in April, 2021.

The Bisons gave Dunkelberger run support with two runs in the second and single runs in the fifth and sixth. A JSU fielding miscue opened the door for the first two runs in the second inning off of JSU starter Reid Fagerstrom. Even though Fagerstrom was saddled with the loss, the sophomore posted five strikeouts.

JSU's chances off of Dunkelberger came in the fourth inning and sixth inning after the first two in each inning reached base on hits, but the good start to those innings were hampered by the double plays. The tandem of senior Cole Frederick and junior T.J. Reeves were in the mix in those two frames and finished the game with a pair of hits each. Reeves leads the team with 12 multi-hit games, while Frederick turned in his 10 multi-hit game of the season. Sophomore Mason Maners extended his hitting streak to six games and pushed his on-base streak to 14 consecutive games with a single.

Senior catcher Alex Carignan erased three Bisons on the base paths by throwing two out on steal attempts and picked off a runner late in the contest. Carignan also tagged out a runner at the plate to keep from adding a run in the fifth.