CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas - The Texas A&M-Corpus Christi baseball team fell to McNeese in the second game of the series at Chapman Field 7-3 despite a strong start by the Islanders' pitching staff starting strong.
"Freshman
Zach Garcia was filthy good and made McNeese, one of the better hitting team in the conference, feel uncomfortable," said head coach
Scott Malone. "I'm in this with them, I make decisions and I'm here to navigate it. We need to keep working and navigate the innings better."
Garcia pitched six complete innings while throwing 96 pitches en route to seven strikeouts. Each of the first six innings he was on the mound, the game remained scoreless for McNeese with the Islanders taking a 3-0 lead. During the seventh inning, sophomores
Colin Purcell and
JT Moeller both took the mound in relief. Fellow sophomore
Sebastian Mejia, who pitched 10 pitches last night, came in to close out the game by pitching the ninth inning.
Sophomores
Diego Johnson,
Tre Jones and
Max Puls scored one run apiece coming in the second, fourth and sixth innings to take the early lead. Caraway earned one run batted in as Puls was credited with two on the night. The game was one of the few in which A&M-Corpus Christi didn't get a lot of walks with the lone one being dealt to junior
Leo Markotic.
Senior
Steven Rivera-Chijin batted three-for-four in the performance as Jones collected two hits. Johnson, Caraway and Puls earned the other three hits on the night. Puls' lone hit was a home run out to right field in the second inning. Rivera-Chijin added on to his conference lead in doubles, collecting another one on the night. Jones earned a triple to complete the team's cycle.
Both teams play the third game of the series tomorrow at 1:00 p.m. at Chapman Field where the game will be streamed on ESPN+.
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