CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas - Texas A&M-Corpus Christi's baseball program fell to UIW in the opening game of the week with a 9-6 loss at Chapman Field Thursday night. The Islanders' record drops to 23-28, 11-11 SLC while the Cardinals improve to 27-23, 13-9 SLC.
"I think they're really good. I think they have a lot of good players," said head coach
Scott Malone. "We'll get after them tomorrow as
Colin Purcell (junior) is up and it will be a big start for him."
UIW got its offense kick-started early, scoring four runs in the second and one in each of the fifth through sixth innings for a 7-0 advantage. The blue and green struck back in the seventh as freshman
Christian Smith-Johnson and senior
Josh Caraway scored on back-to-back hits to put the Islanders on the board. The Cardinals plated two more in the top of the eighth to maintain the lead.
Not giving up without a fight, A&M-Corpus Christi plated another run in the eighth and three more in the bottom of the ninth as they attempted a comeback. In the bottom of the ninth, with an out on the board, junior
Diego Johnson hit a two-RBI double to give the Islanders momentum. Carrying that with them, they plated another run as Johnson scored on an RBI single by
Max Puls a couple of at-bats later. After loading the bases, the blue and green fell just short of the victory.
Johnson had the best night behind the plate, hitting 3-for-5 in the outing, scoring one run and collecting three RBIs. Joining him in the latter category was senior
Max Puls with two RBIs and junior
Sean Curtis at one.
Puls, along with junior
Tre Jones, each earned two hits against the Cardinals with seniors
Brendan Ryan and
Leo Markotic each getting one hit along with sophomore
Chance Reisdorph.
Matthew Watson, a redshirt sophomore, started for the Islanders, pitching 3.2 innings as senior
Sean Sieve came in to close out the fourth. Sophomore
Kyle Dickey and freshman
James Trimble both made appearances for two innings each before junior
Dalton LeBlanc closed out the night on the mound in the ninth.
A&M-Corpus Christi and UIW return to Chapman Field for the second game of the weekend at 6 p.m. and will be streamed on ESPN+.
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