You can’t say they didn’t make it interesting.

Playing their last midweek home game, the Cowboys fell to Houston Tuesday night at Joe Miller Ballpark, but not without a fight.

McNeese State rallied to score two runs in the bottom of the ninth inning and put the winning runs on base, but Conner Westernburg’s hard-hit fly was caught to end the rally.

That gave the Cougars a 4-3 victory.

Marcus Heusohn led off the ninth with a double, which was followed by a Larry Edwards triple. Edwards scored on Mack Brousseau’s sacrifice fly to right.

A two-out walk to Simon Larranaga was followed by Grant Mangrum getting hit by a pitch. Pinch-runners replaced both to set up Westenburg, whose ball was tracked down in left-center by Tre Broussard to end the game.

This is a big week for McNeese, as they host their final Southland Conference series starting Friday night and must also contend with their final exams.

“We got a lot of things going on,” head coach Justin Hill said. 

The Cowboys, just a game out of first and in the thick of the league race, host Stephen F. Austin this weekend. There are six teams within three games of first place with two weeks left to play.

“It’s going to come down to the last weekend,” Hill said Monday. “We just have to keep battling.”

The Cougars (24-20) scored a pair of runs in the third and sixth innings to split the season series against McNeese (30-11). The Cowboys won the first game a couple of weeks back in Houston, 4-3 in 10 innings.

A two-run homer by Aaron Lugo, his fourth of the season, gave the Cougars a 2-0 lead. His shot came off freshman Diego Corrales, who took the loss to fall to 0-2.

McNeese cut the lead in half thanks to Westenburg. After being hit by a pitch, he raced to third on an attempted pickoff by Houston catcher Riley Jackson. Westenburg then got Cougar starter Diego Luzardo to balk him home by faking stealing in the fourth.

Houston scored twice in the sixth on Xavier Perez’s run-scoring double and a squeeze bunt by Anthony Avalos.

Luzardo, who entered the game with an earned run average of 9.75, improved to 2-1, allowing just one hit in five innings.

With the loss, the Cowboys suffered their first three-game losing streak of the season and, after winning 12 straight, have dropped six of their last nine heading into the final set of home games.