CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas – The Texas A&M-Corpus Christi baseball team could not pull off the big upset in their midweek road contest on Tuesday evening, rallying in the middle innings but ultimately fading late and falling to No. 12 Texas in eight innings by a run-rule final score of 15-5.
The loss ensured that the Islanders (6-7) would not walk out of Austin victorious for a second season in a row after taking down the Longhorns (10-1) at UFCA Disch-Falk Field in 2024. It also snapped what had been a three-game winning streak for A&M-Corpus Christi coming into play, with the team most recently sweeping Prairie View A&M in their series over the weekend.
The beginning of Tuesday's game saw Texas show off why it currently holds a national ranking, as it came out and jumped on the Islanders for runs in each of the first three innings of play. The first of these came during the very first at-bat of the game, when on a 3-2 count, starter
Easten Smith was taken deep out to right field for a solo shot that put the team in a hole right away. Two more runs would come across soon after in the second on another home run with two outs off of reliever
Bryson Shea, and the stretch would get capped off in the third on an RBI double to make it 4-0 in favor of the hosts.
Facing this early deficit, the Islanders punched back in a big way, putting together their first sustained rally in the form of a five-run fourth to take their first lead of the evening. The big inning started innocently enough, with senior
Cade Sanchez reaching on a base hit with one out, advancing to second on a throwing error on the same play and then coming home on another error two batters later on a fly ball of the bat of senior
Logan Vaughan to score the team's first run. Things would then start to snowball from here, as after junior
Karson Krowka and senior
Trey Cruz reached on a hit by pitch and walk to load the bases, two more runs would cross on back-to-back walks by junior
Christian Smith-Johnson and senior
Mason Persons. The big blow would arrive once the lineup rolled back over, coming when senior
Isaac Webb capped things off by lacing an 0-2 pitch into left to plate both Cruz and Smith-Johnson and give A&M-Corpus Christi the sudden 5-4 lead.
Unfortunately for the Islanders, however, they would not be able to enjoy this advantage for long, as the Longhorns came roaring back with seven runs of their own in the bottom of the fourth to not only get their own lead back but break things wide open. Much like Texas pitching in the top half of the frame, the A&M-Corpus Christi arms lost control of the strike zone, walking four batters in a row at one point and five in total to keep the traffic moving on the basepaths. The hosts put the exclamation point on the outburst with their third longball of the day, this one a three-run shot to reach double digits on the day and put the Islanders in a six-run hole.
Now trailing once again by an even bigger margin, the Islanders could not regain the same magic at the plate from before, getting held to just a lone infield single by Sanchez the rest of the way while failing to advance any more runners past second base. This was compounded by even more scoring from Texas, as the Longhorns scratched across one more in the fifth, two in the seventh, and finally the finishing blow in the eighth to make it 15-5 and bring the game to its early conclusion.
Despite the tough day overall, A&M-Corpus Christi still saw another great day by Sanchez, who reached base three separate times and increased his batting average up to .370 on the young season. Webb also picked up the pair of RBIs out of the leadoff spot, which made it eight for him in his 13 games played.
The Islanders will now try to bounce back in their next taste of action over the weekend, travelling to Thibodaux on Friday to take on Nicholls in a three-game series for the official start of their Southland Conference schedule.
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