BOX SCORE

BATON ROUGE, La. - It only took the Prairie View A&M baseball team seven innings to move on to the winners bracket of the SWAC Tournament as it defeated Alabama State in a 14-4 run-rule victory Wednesday afternoon at Lee Hines Field.

The Panthers trailed 4-3 heading into the bottom of the seventh and looked as if they were heading into a nail-bitter. However, they exploded for an 11-run inning off of six hits, three errors and five walks. The Panthers batted around twice in the seventh en route to run-ruling Alabama State for the second-consecutive year in the SWAC Tournament. Prairie View A&M defeated the Hornets 10-0 in seven innings on May 19, 2011 in Shreveport, La.

Prairie View A&M reliever Daniel Castillo took over for Derrick Mitchell in the sixth with a one-run deficit and held Alabama State hitless for two innings to pick up the win thanks to some over-the-top hitting by his teammates in the seventh. Castillo improved to 5-0; he also leads the team with five saves.

Brad Benes was highly efficient with his bat for Prairie View A&M on Wednesday, going 3-for-3 with one RBI and two runs scored. Brett Valley, Dominiq Harris and Evan Richard each finished with two RBIs for the Panthers. Richard followed up his second-consecutive First Team All-SWAC selection by going 2-for-3 with two runs scored and two base-on-balls to complement those RBIs.

The Panthers (25-22) will face Jackson State at 6 p.m. Thursday at Lee Hines Field on the Southern campus. Right-hander Stef Hernandez (5-3) is the projected starter for Prairie View A&M.

Live stats can be found on www.pvpanthers.com and www.swac.org.