CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas – The Texas A&M-Corpus Christi baseball team came up on the short end of a wild game against Lamar in the finale of their series on Sunday afternoon, coming all the way back from an eight-run deficit but failing to hold on late and falling in 10 innings by an eye-popping final score of 18-15.
The craziness on the day started right away, with the Islanders (11-12, 1-7 SLC) immediately falling into an 8-0 hole after surrendering a pair of four spots to the Cardinals (14-10, 8-4 SLC) in both the first and second innings. Staring down a daunting climb back into things, the hosts first started chipping away in the bottom of the second, scoring their first three runs to bring them within a more manageable five. The first trip home came when junior
Jayden Reynolds drove in junior
Hunter Azemar with a groundout after the latter led off the inning with a double off the wall in right field, and after a
Christian Smith-Johnson hit-by-pitch and a
Karson Krowka single, junior
Isaiah Afework shot the gap in left center for a triple that scored both.
What followed after this was an incredible turn of events, as A&M-Corpus Christi proceeded to push a whopping seven runs across the plate in the bottom of the fourth, completely erasing its deficit and miraculously taking its first lead of the day. The team loaded the bases right away after a single and two walks, and after a Lamar pitching change, it would start the onslaught with a run-scoring walk from senior
Jackson Smith. Redshirt junior
Jarrett Flaggert would follow this up with a bouncer up the middle to bring in two more, and after a pair of strikeouts brought the Islanders to two down, Reynolds came through with a huge knock of his own, singling through the right side to plate two of his own and tie the game at eight apiece.
The inning would continue even further after this, starting with a pickoff error that allowed Reynolds to move all the way up to third. In the same plate appearance, Smith-Johnson broke the stalemate with a hit of his own to drive in Reynolds, and after a Krowka single and an Afework walk, graduate
Cade Sanchez capped things off with a bases-loaded hit-by-pitch to make it 10 unanswered runs. By the time the fourth finally ended, the Islanders had sent 13 hitters to the plate, notching five hits – two of which came from Krowka by himself – four walks and a hit batsman.
This onslaught would not cease after this either, as after Lamar got a run back in the sixth, the Islanders would score two in the bottom half of the same frame and three more in the eighth to increase their lead up to six. The first of these rallies was brought about by Smith, who came up with two outs and two runners on and laced a liner into the right field corner to bring home both easily. Two innings later, Afework continued his monster day with his third home run of the year, a solo shot just to the right of the batter's eye, which was then followed by back-to-back RBI singles from Azemar and Reynolds to give the team a single-game season high with 15 runs.
As the final score would indicate, however, this lead would not last the next half inning, with the Cardinals rallying for six runs in the top of the ninth to knot the game back up at 15. A&M-Corpus Christi did manage to put its first two hitters on base in the bottom of the ninth, but it was unable to cash in with the winning run in scoring position, which set Lamar up to drive in three more once extra innings rolled around. The Islanders then went down in order in the bottom of the 10
th, sending them to the heartbreaking defeat.
The final box score was understandably full of standout performances up and down the lineup, starting with a trio of three-hit games from Azemar, Krowka and Reynolds, the last of whom also led the team with four RBIs on the day. After this came four two-hit games from the top four in the order of Afework, Sanchez, Smith and Flaggert, with Afework reaching base in six out of his seven total plate appearances while notching two of the team's four extra-base hits with his triple and home run. On the mound, junior
Pierre-Luc Jacques was the bright spot, tossing 3.1 scoreless innings of relief with four strikeouts to keep the team in it while it made its initial early comeback.
The Islanders will now have a quick turnaround to their next game, looking to shake off the tough loss in a road midweek contest against UTSA on Tuesday at 6 p.m.
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