CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas – The Texas A&M-Corpus Christi baseball team could not avoid a sweep at the hands of Southeastern Louisiana in the finale of their series on Sunday afternoon, falling victim to two big innings and getting taken down by a final score of 14-5.
The sweep was the third in conference play for the Islanders (13-24, 5-13 SLC) this season, also falling in three consecutive games to Nicholls on March 7-9 and Lamar on March 21-23. The loss to the Lions (29-7, 14-4 SLC) did not affect their place in the Southland Conference standings, however, as they remained 2.5 games back of the final playoff spot after eighth-seeded Nicholls also lost to Lamar.
In a series that featured some early-inning fireworks in each of the first two games, Sunday's contest did not follow the same script, as Islanders freshman
Bryson Shea traded zeroes with Southeastern's Blake Lobell through the first portion of the afternoon. The first runs of the game for both teams did not come until the fourth inning, with the Lions starting the scoring on a solo home run off of Shea to make it 1-0. A&M-Corpus Christi responded to this twofold in the bottom half of the frame, however, answering with back-to-back homers from senior
Cade Sanchez and junior
Jackson Smith to turn its one-run deficit into a lead of the same margin. This marked the first longball of the year for both Sanchez and Smith, and for the latter, it was his very first in an Islanders uniform.
This advantage did not hold for long, though, with the Lions putting together their first crooked number of the day by hanging a five spot on the board in the top of the fifth to take firm control of the game once again. Now back trailing, the Islanders did start to mount another comeback effort, starting with a run in the bottom of the same frame on a sacrifice fly off the bat of sophomore
Jarrett Flaggert. They would then add one more in the sixth on another big swing by Smith, with the designated hitter crushing his second longball of the day over the fence in right field to cut the deficit back down to two. This homer made Smith the second Islander to hit multiple in a game this season, with the only other player to do so being senior
Trey Cruz on the road against Rice back on March 10.
This turned out be the closest that A&M-Corpus Christi would get, as the Lions would turn up the heat in the later innings to pull away for good. The visitors would rebuild their previous lead with a run in the seventh and two in the eighth, after which they would throw the knockout blow with another five-run outburst in the ninth that came about in large part to three errors in the field that kept the line moving. While this was going on, the hosts could muster just a lone tally of their own in the eighth, scoring on a sacrifice fly from senior
Isaac Webb but going down in order one frame later to take home the tough loss.
The defeat meant that the best power outburst of the season for the Islanders went unfortunately for naught, as the three home runs that they hit went down as their most in a single game this season and their first time hitting that many in any game since they also did so against Southeastern on May 16 of last year. The guys that made that happen – Smith and Sanchez – also finished their respective days with multi-hit performances, joining senior
Austin Russell as the three players to do so for the team on the afternoon.
The Islanders will now try to regroup for another conference series next weekend, traveling east to Lake Charles to square off against McNeese for a trio of games. The opener of that set will take place on Thursday, with first pitch currently scheduled to take place at 6 p.m.
#ShakasUp
