TERRE HAUTE, Ind. – University of Southern Indiana Women’s Track & Field earned a fifth-place finish at the ISU Open Saturday evening after a pair of Screaming Eagles nabbed a podium placements to help give the squad 23 points.
 
Junior Audrey Comastri (Indianapolis, Indiana) secured second place in the 400 meters with a time of one minute and 00.32 seconds, nearly beating her personal best from last year’s ISU Open. Also recording a second-place finish was sophomore Emily Rempe (Owensboro, Kentucky) in the 800 meters with a time of 2:17.03, marking it the third-fastest indoor time in program history.
 
Continuing her early success was freshman Zoe Seward (Rochester, Indiana) who produced another top-five finish, this time in the mile with a time of 5:15.40. The final Eagle to secure a top-five placement was junior Blair Rexing (Fort Branch, Indiana) in the 3,000 meters with a time of 12:44.09 to capture fifth place. Also earning points for USI was junior Emma Thompson (Mt. Vernon, Indiana) who crossed the line in seventh place in the mile with a personal-best time of 5:24.72.

MOBILE, Ala.- University of Southern Indiana Baseball brought the bats on Saturday but couldn’t avoid the big innings defensively. The Screaming Eagles fell short the University of North Alabama, 13-7, Saturday afternoon in Mobile, Alabama.
 
Junior Carson Seeman (Auburn, California) worked his way out of trouble in the first two frames leaving two Lion runners on the base paths in back-to-back innings.
 
The Eagles pushed across two runs in the first off an RBI sacrifice fly from senior Lane Crowden (Jackson, Missouri) after the first three batters reached base. Freshman Cameron Boyd (Villa Hills, Kentucky) took one for the team with a bases loaded hit by pitch to bring in another run and put the Eagles up by two after the first.
 
Junior Terrick Thompson-Allen (Sioux City, Iowa) singled in junior Joe Ricchio (Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin) in the third to extend the lead to three. However, the USI pitching staff started to falter giving up four runs in back-to-back innings in the fourth and fifth. The Eagles countered in the bottom of the fifth after senior Ren Tachioka (Saitama, Japan) and sophomore Caleb Niehaus (Newburgh, Indiana) delivered RBIs to cut the deficit to 8-5.
 
The Eagles couldn’t avoid the big inning on defense as the Lions tagged three more runs in the top of the sixth. Senior Tucker Ebest (Austin, Texas) and Crowden both singled and scored in the bottom of the eighth to bring the Eagles within five. Pitching and defense proved to be the demise for the Eagles today, resulting in a 13-7 loss.
 
Tachioka led the Eagles offensively with three hits. Neihaus, Ebest, and Thompson-Allen collected two hits each.
 

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – University of Southern Indiana Men’s Basketball was stopped by the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, 80-62, Saturday afternoon at Jack Stephens Center in Little Rock, Arkansas. The Screaming Eagles fall to 7-20 overall and 4-10 in OVC play, while the Trojans are 16-11 overall, 10-4 OVC.
 
Despite the loss, USI remains eighth in the league and in the race to secure a spot in the OVC Tournament in March. The Eagles are tied for eighth at 4-10 with Tennessee Tech University, while Southeast Missouri State University is a game behind USI with four games to play in the 2023-24 season. USI, which currently owns the tiebreaker with TTU, and SEMO are scheduled to face off at Screaming Eagles Arena on the last day of the regular season.
 
The top eight teams at the end of OVC play advance to the league tournament March 6-9 at the Ford Center in Evansville. USI has three games on the road remaining before hosting a pair on the final weekend of conference play.  
 
USI fell behind quickly in the opening half as Little Rock scored the first seven points of the game and had an early 12-2 lead. The Eagles rallied to cut the deficit to single-digits three times by the midway point of the first half, but the Trojans took a 38-26 lead into the intermission. Sophomore guard/forward AJ Smith (Edwardsville, Illinois) kept the Eagles in the contest through the first 20 minutes, scoring 13 of the team’s 26 points.
 
The Eagles kept pace with the Trojans in the second half but could not gain ground. USI was never able to cut the deficit to single-digits, slipping to within 10 points, 38-28, with the opening bucket of the final 20 minutes. Little Rock led USI in the second half by as many as 19 points before closing out the 80-62 decision.
 
Smith was the only Eagle to reach double-digits in scoring, adding 10 second half points for a game-high 25 in the loss.
 
Next Up For USI:
USI starts the second half of the four-game road swing Tuesday when it visits OVC front running Morehead State University in Morehead, Kentucky. Tipoff is set of 6:30 p.m.

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. – Freshman Cole Hess (Cannelton, Indiana) led the University of Southern Indiana Men’s Track & Field group at the ISU Open Saturday evening with a first-place finish in the 800 meters. With Hess crossing the line in one minute and 53.17 seconds, he now holds the Screaming Eagles’ 800-meter indoor record, a feat that has sat atop since 2006.
 
With the success of Hess, USI was able to capture fifth place at the meet with 26 points. This is the Eagles best finish in 2024 ahead of the 2024 Ohio Valley Conference Indoor Championships.
 
Making some noise was senior Mitchell Hopf (Santa Claus, Indiana) who placed fourth in the mile with a time of 4:16.31 while senior Draven Thompson (Huntertown, Indiana) closed out USI’s top-10 mile finishers with a time of 4:26.01 to earn eighth place. In the pit, junior James Butler (Evansville, Indiana) secured fifth place with a leap of 20 feet, 3.5 inches in the long jump. Also earning points was freshman Mukal Verma (Palatine, Illinois) with an eighth-place finish in the 3,000 meters after crossing the line in 9:10.02.
 

The Purple Aces visit a Valley team to wrap up the regular season portion of indoor