HOUSTON, Texas – The Texas A&M-Corpus Christi baseball team concluded its five-game road trip on a high note on Monday evening, starting the week with a win in a nonconference matchup against Rice by a final score of 9-4.
The win got the Islanders (7-10) off of their recent skid, as they had recently dropped the first four games of their trip, one to No. 12 Texas in Austin last Tuesday and three to Nicholls over the weekend in their first conference series of the season. It also got them back in the win column against the Owls (2-14), doing so after falling to them 5-3 in the last meeting between the two teams on April 10 of last season.
After struggling with the bats for much of the last three days, the Islanders had no such issues on Monday, getting going by jumping all over Rice for a crooked number in the very first frame. The scoring for the team started just four batters into the game, as after senior
Cade Sanchez doubled and senior
Austin Russell drew a walk, senior
Chance Reisdorph dropped a single into left field to plate the former and get the visitors on the board first. Things would continue in the very next plate appearance as well, with junior
Karson Krowka turning on a 1-0 pitch and lacing it down the line to bring home both Russell and Reisdorph and make it a three-run lead for A&M-Corpus Christi before even taking the field for the first time.
From here, the Islanders kept pouring it on offensively, starting with a run in the second on another RBI from Reisdorph, this one on a double that one-hopped the wall in left center that brought in Sanchez from second. A groundball off the bat of Sanchez that scored junior
Christian Smith-Johnson and a sacrifice fly from Russell brought in two more in the third, and to cap off the outburst, senior
Trey Cruz came up in the fourth and smashed a no-doubt solo home run over the wall in right field, making it seven unanswered runs over the first half of the ballgame.
The Owls finally managed to answer back after this, getting on the board for the first time with a pair of runs in the bottom half of the same frame off of starter
Easten Smith, who had previously retired the first nine batters that he faced to open up the game. The Islanders would quickly nip this momentum in the bud, however, getting both back on one swing of the bat from Cruz in the top of the sixth. After taking three straight balls to start his at-bat, the A&M-Corpus Christi designated hitter got the green light and did not miss, sending one just over the wall to the opposite field for his second longball of the day that brought the team's lead back up to seven runs.
This advantage would prove to be more than enough for the Islanders to ride the rest of the way, handing things over to their bullpen to finish out the comfortable victory. As the first man out, junior
Gage Burdick took the ball for his first relief appearance of the season and pitched very well, tossing three shutout innings while allowing just two hits and a walk and striking out three. After this, junior
Braden LaRusso came on and brought things to the finish line, allowing a pair of runs in the ninth but nothing more and securing the big win for A&M-Corpus Christi.
Monday's game was arguably the Islanders' best offensive performance of the year to date, as they racked up a whopping 18 hits to easily surpass the previous season-high of 12 set on February 28 against Prairie View A&M. Six of these hits went for extra bases as well, with the team seeing four of its hitters notch at least one big swing throughout the night.
Individually, the story of the game was Cruz, who went 3-5 with two home runs, a double and three runs batted in out of the eighth spot in the lineup. With his effort on Monday, Cruz doubled the amount of hits he had on the whole season coming in, and he tallied the same amount of extra-base hits as he had all of last season while playing as a member of Washington State. The New York native has caught fire recently, now tallying knocks in each of his last four games after not recording a single one over his first seven outings to start the year.
Beyond Cruz, A&M-Corpus Christi also got excellent performances from many other players, starting with four-hit nights from both Reisdorph and Smith-Johnson in their best individual efforts of the year. This was just the second four-hit game in the career of Reisdorph, also accomplishing it back on March 28 of last season against Nicholls, and it marked the first such game of Smith-Johnson's three-year tenure with the Islanders. Coming in not far behind was Krowka with three hits and two RBIs of his own, and to round things out, both Sanchez and Russell picked up two knocks apiece at the top of the lineup.
The Islanders will now come home to finish out their stretch of five games in five days, returning back to Chapman Field to host Texas Southern on Tuesday at 6 p.m. for the start of what will be a four-game homestand.
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