SAN ANTONIO – The Texas A&M-Corpus Christi baseball team could not walk away with a victory in its midweek game against UTSA on Tuesday evening, putting together an excellent effort on the mound but still falling on the road by a final score of 3-1.
For the second time in as many meetings between the two this year, the Islanders (11-13) went down to the wire with the Roadrunners (18-7), entering the later stages of the contest in a tight battle once again. Unlike their previous contest on March 3, though, Tuesday ended up being a very competitive pitchers' duel, with the 12 arms that toed the rubber combining to allow just nine hits in total.
For A&M-Corpus Christi, the day on the mound was started by junior
Pierre-Luc Jacques, who took the ball first and pitched two innings, allowing a lone run while punching out four UTSA hitters. After him, sophomore
Bryson Shea tossed a scoreless inning in a nice bounce back from his tough start against Lamar on Sunday, and redshirt junior
Kade Budd followed that up with an incredibly sharp two frames of work, sitting down all six batters he faced while picking up a pair of strikeouts.
With the pitching keeping them in the game, the Islanders' offense finally got going in the sixth, tying the game on one swing of the bat from graduate
Cade Sanchez. As the first hitter of the frame, Sanchez worked himself into a 2-1 count and pulled his hands in on a middle-in fastball, crushing it well over the wall in left field for his second home run and 19
th RBI of the season to make it a 1-1 game. The visitors would go on to threaten two innings later as well when junior
Isaiah Afework led off the eighth with a single and a stolen base, but the outfielder ended up being narrowly gunned down at home on a base hit to left by senior
Jackson Smith, cutting off the scoring chance before the go-ahead run could come across.
This miss would end up haunting A&M-Corpus Christi shortly after, as in the bottom half of the eighth, the Roadrunners would break through with the bats for the first time since the second inning, plating a pair of runs to go back in front once again. Now down to its final three outs, the team could not muster up the rally it needed, going down in order with three groundouts to end the day with the loss.
Individually, Sanchez had another excellent day at the plate, reaching base a team-high three times while driving in its only run with his longball in the sixth. Junior
Matt Evans also notched a multi-hit game by going 2-4 with a double, while Afework and Smith picked up the only other hits on the day. On the mound, the Islanders came back after a tough performance on Sunday and responded very well despite the loss, with the group of Jacques, Shea, Budd and junior
Nathan Mueller combining to toss seven innings of one-run ball while allowing just one hit and one walk and striking out eight.
The Islanders will now look to get going on the right side in conference play over the weekend, traveling south for a three-game series starting Friday against UTRGV in Edinburg in the South Texas Showdown, presented by Rally Credit Union.
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