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COLUMBUS – The eighth-ranked Columbus State University baseball team fell 8-7 in a dramatic series opener against Francis Marion on Friday night. The Peach Belt Conference game was played at Burger King Stadium at Ragsdale Field.
 
Columbus State (30-7, 13-5 PBC) entered the ninth inning trailing by a pair of runs and had its first two hitters retired. Mason McClellan kept the game going with a single through the left side and advanced to second on a wild pitch. Frank Wager then cut the deficit in half with a ringing single into centerfield.
 
Robert Brooks fell behind 0-2, but battled back to draw a walk and push the tying run into scoring position. Grant Berry stepped to the plate and belted an 0-1 pitch to straightaway centerfield. Unfortunately for the Cougars, the centerfielder caught the ball jumping into the centerfield wall to end CSU's comeback hopes.
 
"We didn't have our best stuff tonight," head coach Greg Appleton said. "We made some mistakes in the field and couldn't string together anything on offense and came up just a little short."
 
The Cougars got on the board first on Friday night, getting a RBI groundout from McClellan to bring Justin Evans across the plate in the bottom of the first inning.
 
Francis Marion (15-25, 7-18) matched it with one of its own in the third and then took the lead behind three more runs in the fifth.
 
Columbus State cut into the deficit with a groundout in the fifth and surged back in front in the sixth. Wager led off the sixth with a double and immediately scored on Brooks' RBI single. Two batters later, Austin Pharr crushed a two-run home run to give CSU a 5-4 lead.
 
A solo home run tied the game up in the seventh, but the Cougars answered back with a McClellan RBI single to take the lead back in the bottom half.
 
However, CSU made a pair of defensive miscues in the eighth, allowing the Patriots to plate three runs to seesaw ahead and eventually take the game.
 
Kolton Ingram (8-2) gave up all eight runs, but only four were earned, in 7.2 innings on the mound. The southpaw struck out 10, his fourth double-digit performance this season.
 
Evans, McClellan, Wager and Brooks had two hits apiece to lead the Cougar offense.

The two teams will play a doubleheader on Saturday to wrap up the weekend series. First pitch is scheduled for 1 p.m. at Burger King Stadium at Ragsdale Field.