CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas - Texas A&M-Corpus Christi baseball handed Nicholls their second loss in a row, claiming the game and the series with a 5-4 victory at Chapman Field to win the second conference series of the season.
"It's where we need to be as we need to win series," said head coach
Scott Malone. "It starts here and this has been a great week with a win over UTRGV and now a series win. We need to build on that. I like having seniors on the field and [senior]
Henry Bird went out there and got it done for us."
Junior
Brendan Ryan had the best day behind the plate of the Islanders, hitting three-for-four on the day and falling just a single short of completing a cycle. Ryan doubled in his first at-bat of the day before smashing a home run out to center field in the bottom of the fourth. Halfway there, he took out the next hardest part of the feat with a triple, getting tagged out at home as he fell just short of the inside-the-park home run.
All five of the runs scored for the Islanders came within the first four innings with two coming in both the first and third innings and the final coming on Ryan's home run. He had earlier scored the first run of the game in the first inning with sophomore
Diego Johnson scoring shortly after.
Tre Jones, a sophomore, reached home plate on junior
Leo Markotic's eighth sacrifice fly of the year. Markotic came into the weekend fifth in Division I baseball in the category, now adding to his numbers.
Josh Caraway, another sophomore, earned the second run of the third inning.
True freshman
Zach Garcia, the starter for the matchup, earned the win to better his record to 5-3 while having two saves on the season that came earlier.
Henry Bird, a senior in his final games at Chapman Field, was credited with his second save of the season as he entered the game in the eighth inning, closing it out. Freshman
Clay Westbrook, sophomore
Sebastian Mejia and senior
Dom Lopez all combined for 1.2 innings of work while making appearances on the mound.
Extra-base hits have been a strong suit of the game for the Islanders as the triple by Ryan extends their national lead to 24, two ahead of second place. Coming into the series, the team led the conference in doubles and triples while tied for the most home runs. They now lead the conference in each of the categories after strong performances over the prior two games.
A&M-Corpus Christi and Nicholls take on each other once again on Sunday at 1:00 p.m. streamed on ESPN+ as the Islanders look to sweep a team for the first time this season.
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