MONTICELLO, Ark. – The Southern Arkansas baseball team extended their impressive streak of 30 or more wins in a season to 16 (2001-present) on Monday evening as SAU (30-18, 19-14 GAC) toppled Arkansas-Monticello by a score of 4-3 in 10 innings at Weevils Field.
 
Not only did the win give the Muleriders their 30^th victory of the season and the series victory over UAM, it also denied the Boll Weevils (31-14, 21-9 GAC) a share of the 2016 Great American Conference Baseball Regular Season Championship.
 
Entering play on Monday, the Boll Weevils needed to beat the Muleriders in order to pull into a tie in the GAC standings with Southwestern Oklahoma State, who sat idle after concluding their regular season on Sunday. With the loss, however, the Boll Weevils will now be the No. 2-seed in the upcoming GAC Tournament, but will remain at home to face Harding later this weekend in the opening round best-of-three series.
 
Meanwhile, the Muleriders will play the opening round on the road at Henderson State as SAU was pegged as the No. 5-seed following yesterday's doubleheader split with UAM and Henderson's doubleheader sweep of Ouachita.
 
That best-of-three series between the Muleriders and the Reddies will begin on Friday, May 6 at 6 p.m. with game two being played at 1 p.m. on Saturday, May 7. A third game, if necessary, will be played 30 minutes or so following the conclusion of game two.
 
In their game on Monday, the Muleriders and Boll Weevils battled through three scoreless innings before UAM was able to score a pair of runs off of SAU starter Landon Simpson in the bottom of the fourth.
 
The Muleriders got one of those runs back in the top of the fifth as Michael Page singled in Jackson Murphy to make it a 2-1 game. In the seventh, SAU grabbed a one-run lead at 3-2 after Page registered another RBI single which was then followed by a RBI single from Jake Tisevich.
 
That score held until two outs in the bottom of the ninth when UAM's Nick Piriano dropped a RBI double down the right field line to knot the game at three-all. That game-tying hit came off of SAU closer Jared Fielden, who entered the game a batter prior in relief of Eric Schildt.
 
Piriano's double ended the inning, however and sent the game into extras as he was cut down trying to stretch it into a triple.
 
In the top of the 10^th, SAU grabbed another one-run lead on the strength of Billy Germaine's 17^th homerun of the season. Keaton Miller followed up Germaine's one-out solo homerun with a ringing double, but was stranded there.
 
Fielden returned to the mound in the bottom of the 10^th and retired the side in order while bookending the inning with a swinging strikeouts to preserve the win for the Muleriders.