CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas – The Texas A&M-Corpus Christi baseball team was handed a tough loss in its midweek game against Houston-Victoria on Tuesday, giving up a late lead and falling by a final score of 6-5.
The loss was the second of the season for the Islanders (9-18) at the hands of the Jaguars (26-7), as they also were taken down in Victoria back on February 26 by a final of 6-4. Prior to this year, they had never lost back-to-back games to UHV, and their last defeat of any kind in the matchup came back on March 29, 2017.
After it was the Islanders that got the last meeting between the two teams started at the plate in the top of the first, Tuesday's game saw a reversal of fate, with Houston-Victoria instead turning the tables and putting the hosts in an early deficit from the outset. The Jaguars got traffic on the bases against freshman
Tristan Crane in a hurry in the opening frame, placing three consecutive runners on via a single, a hit by pitch and a walk to load the bases with just one out. A big strikeout got Crane on the doorstep of escaping this jam, but he could not make his way out unscathed, allowing an 0-1 base hit into center to designated hitter Jose Montanez that plated two and put A&M-Corpus Christi down 2-0 before its first time at the plate.
The response from the Islanders wouldn't come until the middle innings of the game, but it arrived in a big way, as they scored five unanswered runs between the fourth and the fifth to not only take its first lead of the day but build up a cushion as well. The first rally started in the heart of the order, when after senior
Isaac Webb singled up the middle and junior
Jackson Smith doubled into the right field corner, both would come in to score on a throwing error on a ball off the bat of senior
Cade Sanchez followed by an RBI groundout by sophomore
Will Stark. The team would then take the lead in the next frame on a sacrifice fly by senior
Austin Russell, and it would extend this advantage immediately after on a two-run home run from senior
Trey Cruz over the wall in right field. The blast was Cruz's fifth of the season so far, and it brought the score up to 5-2 in favor of A&M-Corpus Christi.
This lead would last all the way until the eighth inning, with freshman
Bryson Shea and junior
Preston Watkins combining to toss three scoreless innings after the departure of Crane, who himself settled down and finished four frames in his start while giving up just the two runs in the first and striking out four. The Jaguars would roar back to life with the bats at the expense of the Islanders, however, getting a big swing of their own from first baseman Rafael Gutierrez, who took his second pitch from senior
Cam Soliz with two runners on and snuck it just inside the foul pole in left field for a three-run homer that tied the game up at five apiece. This wouldn't be it, either, as after loading the bases right after, they would then go back on top when new reliever
Braden LaRusso hit his first batter after entering to bring in another run from third base.
LaRusso would go on to escape the eighth with no further damage and then work a perfect ninth, which gave the Islanders one last chance to make some magic happen at the plate. This would not come to fruition, though, as they could not get another rally off the ground, going down in three consecutive plate appearances to walk away with the tough defeat. This was actually the fourth straight inning where UHV retired A&M-Corpus Christi in order, as after a leadoff single by Stark in the sixth, the Jaguars sat down 12 straight Islanders hitters in order to close things out.
The best day in the Islanders lineup came from Cruz, who picked up a double in addition to his two-run homer to finish his day with two extra-base hits in his four at-bats. Webb also recorded a two-hit day out of the third spot in the lineup while picking up a stolen base, and rounding out the hit column were Smith, Stark, junior
Jarrett Flaggert and senior
Mason Persons.
The Islanders will now try to snap their four-game losing streak over the weekend, when they welcome Southland-leading UTRGV to town for a three-game conference series. Every game of the set will count toward the South Texas Showdown, presented by Rally Credit Union, with the first currently scheduled to take place on Friday at 6 p.m.
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