Cowboys travel to tangle with Cajuns
{{tncms-inline alignment="left" content="<p class="p1"><span class="s1"><strong>McNeese at Louisiana-Lafayette</strong></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><strong>6:30 p.m., CST  </strong></span><span class="s2"> </span></p>" id="9d4758f4-211e-4052-b7f3-e989559d0779" style-type="fact" title="TONIGHT" type="relcontent"}}
<p class="p1">The McNeese State baseball team will look to get back one on its Interstate 10 rival Louisiana-Lafayette on Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. at M.L. “Teague” Moore Field at Ruuso Park.
<p class="p1">The game, which will be televised on Cox Sports TV, will serve as a rematch of the Ragin’ Cajuns’ (15-17) 5-2 victory against the Cowboys (13-19) in Joe Miller Ballpark three weeks ago.
<p class="p1">“It will be fun,” said McNeese head coach Justin Hill. “It will be a great atmosphere. They’ve been playing well, and we’ve been playing well. It will be fun to go play tomorrow.”
<p class="p1">Cayne Ueckert (2-2, 3.81 ERA) will start on the mound for McNeese. The start marks his first since March 10 against Central Arkansas.
<p class="p1">Ueckert began the season in the weekend rotation, but after a personal emergency sidelined him for some time, he’s slowly worked his way back into a hybrid role for the Cowboys.
<p class="p1">“We haven’t been able to put him in a situation we would normally want to, yet,” Hill said. “Obviously, when you start, you get to go through your whole routine. I thought that would be a good situation for him.”
<p class="p1">Hill said he doesn’t expect Ueckert to go more than three innings before turning to someone else, likely Austin Briggs, who started for the Cowboys against Texas last week.
<p class="p1">McNeese took an NCAA mandated day off on Monday, which Hill said was probably for the best anyway considering the Cowboys just came off a tough weekend against Abilene Christian and Monday marked the first day back to classes after spring break.
<p class="p1">UL-Lafayette will use lefty Hogan Harris (1-1, 4.73) on the mound against McNeese. Harris has just 13 1/3 innings of work under his belt this season, so the Cowboys will look to take advantage of his lack of play so far this season.
<p class="p1">The Cajuns enter the game with a .222 team batting average led by Daniel Lahare batting .295 with a .381 slugging percentage. UL-Lafayette hasn’t been a hard-hitting team this season, with just seven home runs as a unit on the year.
<p class="p1">The Cowboys have also struggled at the plate as they have a .239 team batting average led by Andrew Bryan batting .349 after a solid weekend in which he hit his second home run of the season.
<p class="p1">Shane Selman has begun to find his groove again batting .302, though he hasn’t hit a home run in 12 games. The Cowboys are a bit more comfortable with the long ball, as they have hit 23 on the season.
<p class="p1">“I like the way we’ve been playing,” Hill said. “We’ve been pitching it well, playing timely defense and finally starting to get some timely hits. We’ll see if we can get it going offensively a little bit.”
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<p class="p1"><span class="s1"><strong>McNeese at Louisiana-Lafayette</strong></span>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1"><strong>6:30 p.m., CST </strong></span> <span class="s2"> </span>