Baseball Game Preview: Long Beach Bearcats vs. Hattiesburg Tigers

The Long Beach Bearcats will square off against the Hattiesburg Tigers at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday. Long Beach will be strutting in after a win while Hattiesburg will be coming in after a defeat.

Long Beach will bounce into Thursday's game after beating Picayune, who they had gone 2-7 against in their nine prior meetings. The Bearcats came out on top against the Maroon Tide on Friday by a score of 5-1 (the very same score they lost by in their prior game). Give some credit to the fans of both teams: the last three times they've met, the home team has come away the winner.

The team relied heavily on Dax Arkin, who got on base in all three of his plate appearances with two runs, one stolen base, and one RBI.

Meanwhile, Hattiesburg didn't have quite enough to beat Cathedral on Wednesday and fell 5-4.

Hattiesburg saw five different players step up and record at least one hit. One of them was Joe Polk, who went 1-for-3 with one triple, one run, and one RBI. Tyler Weatherspoon was another, going a perfect 3-for-3 with one stolen base.

Long Beach is on a roll lately: they've won six of their last eight matches. That's provided a nice bump to their 16-12 record this season. Those victories came thanks in part to their pitching effort, having only surrendered 3.4 runs on average over those games. As for Hattiesburg, they dropped their record down to 13-9 with the loss, which was their third straight on the road.

Long Beach took their win against Hattiesburg when the teams last played back in April of 2021 by a conclusive 10-4 score. The rematch might be a little tougher for the Bearcats since the team won't have the home-field advantage this time around. We'll see if the change in venue makes a difference.