CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas – Gearing up for its home conference opener, the Texas A&M-Corpus Christi baseball team will look to ride some momentum into a three-game series with Nicholls at Chapman Field this weekend.
For the three-game series, the teams will move to a Thursday through Saturday format in concordance with the Easter holiday on Sunday. Thursday and Friday's games will begin at 6 p.m. while Saturday will feature the 1 p.m. day game. Thursday night's game will be the only one streamed live on ESPN+.
The Islanders are coming home following a highly successful road stretch, first opening the conference slate last weekend at UIW where they secured the 2-1 series victory before heading up to Austin to take down the University of Texas 4-1 in the Tuesday midweek challenge.
All four games had A&M-Corpus Christi jump out hot, with 27 of their 31 runs all coming within the first five innings of each meeting. The Islanders hit a homerun in each one as well for the four-game streak, the longest of the season.
Junior
Garrett Gruell took responsibility for three of those after he went yard at least once in each game of the series with UIW including a two-run homer in the rubber match. Sophomore
Christian Smith-Johnson then hit the game-changing three-run blast against the Longhorns to separate the final 4-1 decision.
It marked A&M-Corpus Christi's sixth-ever win over the Longhorns, first since 2019 when they won 8-2 at home, and the first time they beat Texas in Austin since 2016. Additionally, it was their first win over a Power Five school since the 2022 season when they took two out of three from Nebraska on the road. The Islanders defeated Houston last year in a 12-2 run-rule, right before the Cougars joined the Big 12.
Gruell is one of just two Islanders to have started in all 29 games this year for the Islanders along with junior
Isaac Webb as they have batted into the team's top-three averages. Senior
Sebastian Trinidad leads the Islanders with a .357 batting average with four others hitting over a .300 on the year with Webb (.333), Gruell (.330), senior
Cole Modgling (.319), and junior
Chance Reisdorph (.313).
The last four games have also helped A&M-Corpus Christi break back into the NCAA's top-20 for season total hits, now ranked #19 with 271. Webb finds himself ranked #15 overall in the NCAA in hits with a team-best 41 on the year, placing him second so far in the SLC.
The Islanders also rank top-10 nationally in double plays (25) and triples (12).
A&M-Corpus Christi leads Nicholls 30-15 in the all-time series. The Islanders will look to avenge last year's series when the Colonels took it 2-1 in Thibodeaux on route to winning the 2023 regular season title.
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