LAKE CHARLES, La. – The Texas A&M-Corpus Christi baseball team blitzed its way to a lopsided win over McNeese on Friday afternoon, cruising to a 13-5 victory on the strength of five home runs at the plate.
The 13-run outburst was one of the biggest of the season for the Islanders (14-25, 6-14 SLC), ranking only behind the 14 that they put up on April 4 on the road against Stephen F. Austin. With the win, they managed to snap what had been a six-game losing streak against the Cowboys (28-7, 15-5 SLC), doing so while also picking up their biggest win by margin of victory in the matchup since an 11-2 triumph at home on May 6, 2012.
The Islanders got the fireworks started right out of the gates on Friday, jumping out to a 2-0 lead just three batters into the afternoon. Senior
Austin Russell led off the game with a base hit, and after a sacrifice bunt moved him over, sophomore
Jarrett Flaggert crushed the team's first homer of the day, taking a 1-1 offering and depositing it over the wall in left field. This continued Flaggert's red-hot form as of late, with the third baseman going 19-42 with seven extra-base hits and seven RBIs over his last 12 games.
After McNeese put up a run of its own in the bottom of the second, the Islanders would proceed to piece together their first crooked number of the day, answering back by scoring four in the third to further extend their advantage. After senior
Drake Kerr reached via a walk, the rally really began when senior
Isaac Webb reached base on an error that would've ended the inning with no harm. This extended things for junior
Jackson Smith, who took full advantage by lacing a base hit to plate Kerr from second and keep the line moving. Right after this came the big damage, as in the very next plate appearance, senior
Cade Sanchez stepped up to the box and crushed a three-run bomb out to left to make it a 6-1 game. This was Sanchez's second homer of the year, with the first coming just last Sunday at Chapman Field against Southeastern.
A&M-Corpus Christi did not let off the gas from here, continuing to pour it on with the bats through the middle innings of the game to nip any Cowboys rallies in the bud. The team's next run came via another home run, with senior
Chance Reisdorph doing the honors by leading off the top of the fourth with a solo shot for his second of the year. The Islanders would go on to score two more on a two-out, two-RBI single by junior
Karson Krowka in the fifth before then reaching double digits one frame later on a three-run dinger off the bat of Smith. Like Flaggert, Smith has caught fire recently, with this home run representing his fourth in just the last three games.
Before the day was done, the Islanders would add one more longball to the tally, finally wrapping up the scoring on a leadoff solo shot by Kerr in the eighth that brought in their 13
th run of the day. This would prove to be more than enough support for the team's pitching staff, with senior
Zach Garcia tossing seven innings while allowing four earned runs and striking out five in a rare Saturday start and sophomore
Matthew Molina navigating the last two frames with just one run allowed to bring the game to its conclusion.
The five home runs that the Islanders hit on Friday went down as the most that they have hit in a single game this year, easily surpassing the previous high of three done on two separate occasions. The last time they crushed that many home runs in a game came more than three years ago, when they did so en route to a 21-4 blowout win on the road against Nebraska on March 20, 2022. Today's longballs also accounted for nearly a quarter of their total for the entire season, as they came into play with just 16 over their first 38 games.
The Islanders will now try to secure their second conference series win of the season in the finale on Saturday, kicking things off in the rubber match at 1 p.m.
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