CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas – The Texas A&M-Corpus Christi baseball team came up short in a wild game on Tuesday evening, faltering late and dropping to Texas Southern in its return to Chapman Field in a high-scoring 14-13 affair.
The 14 runs that the Islanders (7-11) surrendered to the Tigers (5-11) was their second-most in a single game so far this season, coming in just behind the 16 that they allowed on February 17 in their opening series against Kansas. Tuesday's game also marked the first time that they both scored and allowed 10 or more runs in a game since May 5 of last year, when they dropped an extra-inning contest 13-10 at home to McNeese.
As the final score would indicate, the scoring on Tuesday kicked off in a hurry, with Texas Southern jumping on the board with a run in its first time up on an RBI single with two outs. The response from the Islanders came right after, and it came in a huge way, as they managed to plate a whopping eight runs in the bottom of the first to take a commanding lead early on. The outburst first started just four batters in, as after a leadoff walk by senior
Cade Sanchez followed by a base hit by junior
Karson Krowka, senior
Austin Russell came up and slashed a 1-2 pitch down the left field line to plate both and give the team a lead for the first time. An error on a ball off the bat of senior
Chance Reisdorph and a bases loaded hit-by-pitch from senior
Mason Persons further extended this advantage, and for the big swing of the inning, junior
Christian Smith-Johnson found the gap in right center for double that brought home all three runners on base. To cap things off, Sanchez picked up a sacrifice fly in his second plate appearance of the inning, making it 8-1 in favor of A&M-Corpus Christi.
The scoring margin would stay like this for a while, with the two teams trading scores throughout the middle innings. The Tigers started by picking up their second run in the top of the third, getting back on the board on a fielder's choice with two outs, but the Islanders answered right back in the bottom of the fourth with an RBI single on a well-struck ball up the middle by senior
Trey Cruz. This continued a red-hot stretch for Cruz, with the run marking his fourth RBI over the past two games after homering twice on Monday against Rice.
After an uneventful couple of innings after this, the game would get flipped all the way on its head once the seventh rolled around, as Texas Southern managed to top A&M-Corpus Christi's eight-run first with a 10-run barrage that not only erased its deficit entirely but gave it an improbable lead once again. The Tigers sent 14 hitters to the plate over the course of the frame, doing so by tallying five hits, drawing two walks with one hit-by-pitch and reaching on three separate errors by Islanders fielders, including two in the form of throwing miscues from the team's pitchers. They ended up having to use five different pitchers to escape the inning, and by the time they finally got the third out, they went from having a seven-run lead to shockingly trailing by three.
The Islanders did try to do their best to bounce back after this, starting with a two-run blast in the bottom of the seventh from Cruz for his third home run in just over a 24-hour span. Two more runs for the Tigers put them back at the same disadvantage, but they responded right away with another rally, this one coming on another RBI single from Cruz and an error that made it a one-run game. A&M-Corpus Christi could not notch the big hit after this, however, ending the eighth on a failed double steal attempt with two outs and then leaving the tying and winning runs on base in the ninth without managing to bring either of them across the plate.
Even with the loss, the Islanders did see some more great performances on the offensive end, starting with three-hit efforts from both Cruz and Smith-Johnson. After they both got off to cold starts to their respective campaigns, the former has now gone 6-9 with three home runs and seven RBIs since Monday, and the latter has gone 7-10 with three RBIs over the same time. The top three of Sanchez, Krowka and Russell also managed to pick up a hit apiece, doing so while driving in three runs between them.
The Islanders will now try to rebound over the weekend in a conference matchup against Northwestern State, with the start of the three-game series set to take place on Friday at 6 p.m.
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