South Alabama had just one good offensive inning on Friday night, but it was enough for a 6-2 victory over Louisiana-Monroe.

The Jaguars sent 11 men to the plate and scored six runs in the bottom of the eighth, rising from the dead after Warhawks pitchers had shut them down for seven. South Alabama (28-21, 12-13 Sun Belt Conference) connected for five straight RBI singles to erase a 2-0 deficit and snap a three-game losing streak.

“You get 27 outs — three per inning,” South Alabama coach Mark Calvi said. “It didn’t look good and we were getting it stuffed up our tailpipe for a while there. We just hung in there and hung around, hung around, hung around.

“It would have been easy to just say, ‘well, this isn’t our night.’ We got stuffed the last couple of games, and you just put your guard down. But our guys, fought, kept their guard up and we came out with a win. I’m proud of their effort.”

Neither team scored until the bottom of the seventh, when ULM (21-29, 7-18) got Jason Zmejkoski’s 2-run triple off the center-field wall. Warhawks left-handers Cam Barlow and Chipper Menard had held the Jaguars to just two hits at that point, but the Jaguars finally broke through in the eighth.

Tyler Borges led off with a single (South Alabama’s first hit since the second inning), but Menard got Rett Johnson for the first out before being pulled despite allowing just one hit in 3 1/3 innings. The Jaguars greeted reliever Brandon Brewer with consecutive singles by Duncan Mathews, Will Turner, Brennan Holt (on a perfectly-placed bunt) and Lucas Ismaili to go up 3-2.

Carson Orton replaced Brewer and Micah Morgan followed with another single to make it 4-2. JG Bell was hit by a pitch to force in a fifth run, then Ethan Melton walked before Brewer — who was charged with four runs and took the loss to fall to 1-1 — was himself replaced by Zach Shaw.

Shaw slipped off the mound for a balk to score South Alabama’s sixth run of the inning, before striking out the next two hitters to finally end the eighth. Jaguars closer Gant Starling worked around a one-out single with three strikeouts in the ninth to finish off the victory.

Despite being the only South Alabama pitcher to allow runs, Jaxon Shineflew (2-0) picked up the win in relief of Cam Hill. The Jaguars starter threw only 67 pitches in six shutout innings, but Calvi said he pulled him from the game for strategic reasons, and not because Hill took a wicked one-hopper off his leg in his final inning.

“Shineflew’s been so good for us,” Calvi said. “Cam Hill was really, really good, but that’s kind of been the formula for us. … I felt as though the third time through (the batting order), we had to make a switch. Those middle innings have been an Achilles heel for us.

“I just felt that was the right move to make. And if we lost, I could have gone to sleep tonight and known that I had started the right guy and I brought the right guy in.”

The game featured two wild plays in the early innings, costing each team a run. Johnson’s apparent two-out RBI double was taken off the board in the second because he was called out for missing first base, leaving the Jaguars scoreless.

In the third, Warhawks DH Jack Clark was called out and ejected for running into Duncan — the Jaguars’ catcher — at home plate following a two-out Michelle Artzburger single. Melton’s throw from right field pulled Duncan up the line, but umpires ruled that Clark could have avoided contact and called him out.

South Alabama also got good news on the injury front, as star left fielder Joseph Sullivan took batting practice prior to the game. Sullivan, out for nearly a month with a wrist injury, could return either Tuesday at Southeastern Louisiana or next Friday at Louisiana, Calvi said.

“He actually started taking (batting practice) last week,” Calvi said. “He looks really good. It’s been kind of an every-other-day thing. He stood in there against some live pitching Wednesday, did not swing the bat, just stood in there and saw some.

“He’s not on the roster this weekend, but maybe Tuesday is a target date at Southeastern. He feels like he’ll be ready next weekend. We’ll see how he feels.”

The series continues at 2 p.m. Saturday.