Box Score
Hennon Interview

STATESBORO, Ga. - Sam Howard held Maryland Eastern Shore to two hits over seven innings as the Georgia Southern Eagles took the series opener 23-0 at J.I. Clements Stadium Friday night.

Georgia Southern (4-1) tallied 23 hits, their second game in the last three with 20 or more hits, to score 20 or more runs for the first time since 2011 and score 23 runs for the first time since the 23-2 win over #8 Georgia Tech on April 8, 2009 in Atlanta. The Eagles now have 10 or more hits in all four of their wins this season.

Howard (2-0) picked up his second win in as many starts after punching out a career-best 12 batters over seven innings. The junior left hander helped the Eagles throw their first shutout of the young season. He allowed just three base runners and faced 24 batters on the night.

"I thought Sam did a nice job for us. He came out and set a good tone for us by throwing strikes," Head Coach Rodney Hennon said about Howard's performance. "We played good clean baseball tonight. We made some good plays defensively and the guys swung the bats well. It was just a good team win."

The Eagles backed Howard with four early runs before exploding for six runs in the fourth and seven in the sixth inning. Kody Adams, Chase Griffin, Stryker Brown and Garren Palmer all homered for the Eagles. Aaron Mizell recorded the team's first triple of the season in the fourth inning.

Ben Morgan and Garrett Chapman led the team with three hits each. All nine hitters in the order recorded a hit on the night with six posting multi-hit games.

Devin Repine was tagged with the loss for Maryland Eastern Shore (0-2). Repine (0-1) allowed 10 runs on eight hits in his first start of the season. The junior right hander struck out two and walked two batters in 3.1 innings.

Baseball continues the four-game series tomorrow with a doubleheader at 4 p.m. It's 2 for 1 day at the ballpark and fans can get two games for the price of one. The series concludes on Sunday with a single game at 1:30 p.m.

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