A number of fans — whether they were packed shoulder to shoulder in a Plainsman Park seat, laying on a blanket behind the right-center field wall or standing somewhere on the parking garage that looks over the third-base line — probably caught their first in-person glimpse of the Auburn baseball team Friday night.

They departed with a lesson that’s been drilled into the heads of those who have followed the SEC West champions from start to finish.

Never give up on the Tigers’ offense.

Auburn went nine up, nine down through Friday’s first three innings for the first time this season, but responded with runs over the next five en route to a 9-7, NCAA regional-opening victory over Jacksonville State in front of a sell-out crowd of 4,096. Auburn officials estimated that 1,500 more took in the action from beyond the center-field wall or the top of the parking garage.

Auburn advances to play second-seeded Clemson, which had a much easier time in its 10-1 victory Friday afternoon over Southern Miss. Left-hander Grant Dayton (8-2, 4.33 ERA) will take the mound for Auburn against Clemson’s Casey Harman. Jacksonville State will play Southern
Miss in an elimination game today at 2 p.m.

“I thought we showed some true grit and some true character in finding a way to win today,” coach John Pawlowski said. “Nothing really came easy today.”

The Tigers’ offense did it in a variety of ways Friday — with two outs, with smallball, with home runs from unexpected sources such as Justin
Fradejas, Dan Gamache and Casey McElroy — but it had to overcome a major blow to its confidence after the first three innings.

Undefeated right-hander Austin Lucas used five pitches in the first inning and 32 through three to go through the SEC’s most potent lineup unscathed.

He just couldn’t do it twice.

“We were struggling in the first three innings,” Fradejas said. “We had to get something going.”

Fradejas took it upon himself, jumpstarting the Tigers with a leadoff bunt single, which was promptly followed with a Trent Mummey RBI double.
A Gamache sacrifice fly and a Ryan Jenkins RBI single wrapped things up and, all of a sudden, the NCAA Tournament’s highest-ranked four-seed was forced to play catch-up the entire night.

The Gamecocks didn’t buckle.

After Auburn’s wakeup call in the fourth inning, the Gamecocks responded with three runs of their own to chase Cory Luckie and force
Pawlowski to go to his bullpen earlier than he preferred. After Auburn’s two-run fifth inning, spearheaded by Fradejas’ first home run since the first game of the season, Jacksonville State responded again to tie the score, 5-5.

“We never gave up,” Jacksonville State coach Jim Case said.

The game was an exact replica of the teams’ meeting two weeks earlier, when the Tigers won their final non-conference game of the season, 9-7, after trading blows with the Gamecocks inning after inning.

And for a second consecutive time, Auburn just had more artillery in the end.

Gamache gave Auburn the lead for good with a solo home run in the sixth inning and the Tigers added two more in the seventh thanks to some small ball and a costly Jacksonville State error.

Justin Hargett led off with a bunt single and Fradejas followed with an attempted sacrifice bunt. A wayward throw from reliever Alex Jones, though, put Fradejas on second and Hargett on third. After a Mummey groundout, Brian Fletcher plated Hargett with an RBI groundout and Tony
Caldwell drove in Fradejas with an infield single to give Auburn an 8-5 lead.

McElroy’s solo home run in the eighth provided an answer to Jacksonville State’s two-run top half of the inning and served as extra cushion for closer Austin Hubbard. Hubbard struck out Jake Sharrock to send Auburn forward in the winners’ bracket and its capacity crowd home happy.

“We knew coming into this ballgame today the type of challenge we were up against,” Pawlowski said. “And that’s exactly what we got.”

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