PEARL — With the lead down to a run and three innings still to play, Southern Miss coach Corky Palmer felt it was time to bring in his closer, Collin Cargill.

Cargill responded, pitching three scoreless innings and inducing two double plays to end the seventh and ninth innings to pace the Golden Eagles past Ole Miss 6-4 Tuesday night at Trustmark Park.

“I felt that we had to go with him at that point and tonight, his stuff was really good,” Palmer said of Cargill, who nailed down his eighth save of the season. And it came against an Ole Miss squad that won a three-game weekend series against the previously No. 1 ranked Georgia.

“That is a fine ball club we beat. This will be good for our kids,” Palmer said.

Cargill said he wasn’t bothered by having to go three innings against the nation’s seventh-ranked team.

“If I allowed myself to think about it, my focus wouldn’t have been there,” said Cargill, who had three strikeouts, including a one of Ole Miss’ top hitter and former Vicksburg High product Jordan Henry in the ninth. The punchout was followed later by a game-ending double play.

“I don’t strike out a lot of people. I’m a groundball pitcher. I let my defense work,” Cargill said. “But with Jordan, I tried to locate my fastball outside. I left one up and I was lucky that he fouled it off. Then I threw another fastball to get him out.”

“He has a good sink to his fastball and he just located that pitch really well,” Henry said of his ninth inning at-bat against Cargill. Henry finished 1-for-5 with an RBI and a run scored, but he also struck out twice.

Ole Miss coach Mike Bianco credited Cargill and the Southern Miss offense for denying his team a second win this season at Trustmark.

“With a submarine-type guy, they tend to get a lot of sink on their fastball, but tonight, he had some good velocity to go with it,” Bianco said. “We had runners in scoring position. We just didn’t get the big hit and they did.”

Ole Miss (32-13) outhit Southern Miss 10-9, but the Golden Eagles (27-17) strung together four runs in the fifth and a big RBI double by B.A. Vollmuth in the eighth.

Southern Miss grabbed a 5-1 lead after scoring four runs in the top of the fifth inning. Three straight singles, the last a hit to left by Taylor Walker, plated the first run to snap a one-all tie.

James Ewing then bunted toward the third base side, but Tyler Koelling rolled into Rebel third baseman Zach Miller and the forceout could not be made. Koelling then scored on a sacrifice bunt by Bo Davis to make it 3-1 while Walker and Ewing moved up a base. With two out, Kameron Brunty knocked Baker out of the game with a double to deep right to score Walker and Ewing for a 5-1 lead.

Ole Miss got a run back in the bottom of the fifth when Matt Smith drove in Zach Miller on a fly ball to right.

The Rebels got two more in the seventh when Tim Ferguson led off with a triple and then scored on Henry’s single to right. Henry then took second on a wild pitch and scored on single by Miller to make it 5-4.

Southern Miss got one run back in the eighth when former Hinds Community College product Corey Stevens knocked the ball out of the glove of Ole Miss catcher Kyle Henson at the plate following the double into left by Vollmuth.

Southern Miss scored a run in the first after Walker walked, went to third on a hit by Ewing and then came on fly out to right by Joey Archer.

Ole Miss answered in the second when Henson homered. Initially the hit was ruled a ground-rule double but the umpires later ruled the ball did hit a green bullpen fence behind the outfield fence and Henson was given his sixth home run of the year.

Jeff Stanley went six innings to grab the win and move to 2-0 while Nathan Baker (3-1) took the loss.

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By Jeff Byrd at jbyrd@vicksburgpost.com