CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas – Bringing a lot of momentum back home, the Texas A&M-Corpus Christi baseball team will welcome in UTSA for a three-game series Friday through Sunday at Chapman Field.
The series will open Friday night with a 7 p.m. pitch under the lights at Chapman Field. Saturday's night game will be moved up slightly to a 6:30 p.m. start time while Sunday's format will stay at a 1 p.m. midday finale.
The Islanders (7-8) are inching towards evening up their season after a lot of success over the last week winning four of their last five games. In their last home weekend series, they defeated Abilene Christian 2-1 followed by taking a stunning 6-5 win at Texas State this past Wednesday night.
"I'm excited to see our guys try and sustain what we're doing," said head coach
Scott Malone. "I think they're doing a great job of having their feet on the ground and attacking every day, the group is the right group, it's blue collar, they're hard workers. But it just also feels like we're going through a gauntlet and as much as last week was great and we've won a handful of games here in this good stretch, UTSA is ultra talented and spent part of the season in the top-25 last year, so the schedule doesn't get any easier. We're at home, UTSA is a loaded team, and the goal is to win the series."
In their last five games, the Islanders have combined to out-hit their opponents 39 to 30 to tack on to their season-total of 144. That mark ranks them 16
th overall in the NCAA with six triples putting them at 14
th overall.
Leading the team in both of those is junior
Isaac Webb who has already knocked 23 hits on the year with a pair of triples. He is batting a team-best .348 and is joined above .300 by junior
Drake Kerr (.344), junior
Garrett Gruell (.339) and senior
Sebastian Trinidad (.313.).
Kerr leads the team in runs scored with 14, while also leading with four sacrifice bunts to help the team rank first in the league and #10 in the NCAA in the category with 11 total on the year. Fellow junior
Logan Vaughan is the team's most effective run producer, driving in a team-high 12 runs. He is especially coming off a heroic performance after driving in half of A&M-Corpus Christi's runs in the win at Texas State.
On the mound, junior
Zach Garcia is coming off a Sunday appearance in the rubber match with Abilene Christian where he threw a quality start for his first win of the season. Through 17.1 innings, he has produced a 2.60 ERA and has struck out 17 he's faced.
Junior
Maddox Thornton has now gotten up to three saves on the year, his most recent one coming at Texas State. The usual starter has recently taken on the closing role and has done so in shutout fashion every time to earn him the three saves, ranking him ninth in the nation.
Overall, the Islanders are holding their opposing batters to a .252.
"These guys have taken on the challenge of playing all these big-name schools and really talented baseball schools and we're seeing the fruits of that a little bit. There's going to be ups and downs, whether it's this week, next week, you want things to be right couple of weeks down the road when you get ready for conference play, so that's the big thing," said Malone.
The Islanders trail UTSA 15-28 in the all-time series and will be seeking revenge after dropping last year's series. Though, they will look to match their last time against the Roadrunners when they won 8-2 in San Antonio in an extra midweek matchup last season.
All three games will be available to watch live on ESPN+.
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