CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas – The Texas A&M-Corpus Christi baseball team secured a series victory over Incarnate Word in dramatic fashion on Saturday afternoon, rallying big late to earn a come-from-behind win by a final score of 10-5.
Long before the Islanders (16-26, 8-15 SLC) got going with their late-game heroics, them and the Cardinals (16-27, 2-21 SLC) started the game off hot, scoring early and often while also missing opportunities to tack on even more. UIW kicked things off with a run in the opening frame on an RBI double just three batters into the game, but A&M-Corpus Christi answered this with three unanswered scores of its own to wrestle the lead right back. The first two of these came with two outs in the bottom of the first on a bases-loaded walk by junior
Christian Smith-Johnson and an infield single by senior
Trey Cruz, and the next came one inning later via an RBI groundout off the bat of junior
Jarrett Flaggert. Even with the early scoring, though, both teams would strand the bases loaded in each of their first two times up, keeping things from spiraling too far in either direction.
The game would calm down from here, with Islanders starter
David Dean and Cardinals reliever EJ Garcia navigating the middle innings with minimal damage. After allowing the run in the first, Dean would only surrender one more for the rest of his outing on a sacrifice fly in the fifth, finishing six innings for his first quality start with the team. This was also the first time that the lefty had thrown that many frames in a game this year, surpassing his previous high of 5.1 set against Stephen F. Austin back on April 6.
After Dean's departure, UIW would quickly get to A&M-Corpus Christi's bullpen, striking for two runs in the seventh to retake the lead for the first time since its opening score. This would not last for long, however, as the Islanders responded with one of their biggest offensive onslaughts of the season, scoring seven runs in the bottom of the eighth to get their lead back and then some. The team would level the game back up just two batters into the inning, with senior
Logan Vaughan singling home junior
Karson Krowka after the latter picked up a leadoff single and advanced to second on a wild pitch. Right after this, senior
Drake Kerr came through with the big hit, lacing a line drive into the right-center gap for a huge triple that scored Vaughan all the way from first and brought the score up to 5-4 in favor of the hosts.
Even after regaining their advantage, the Islanders continued to pour things on, adding five more runs to their total after Kerr's knock. The first chunk of these came on a monster home run off the bat of junior
Jackson Smith, with the first baseman crushing a long three-run shot to the trees in right center for his sixth home run in just the last six games. Sophomore
Will Stark followed this up with a longball of his own two batters later – his first as a member of the program – and to cap things off, Krowka got on the board with an RBI single in his second plate appearance of the inning to bring the team up to double digits on the day. This would end up being more than enough scoring, as junior
Gage Burdick held the Cardinals to just one run in the ninth to wrap things up and earn his third win of the season.
"I'm super proud of these guys," said head coach
Scott Malone. "I told them that I've watched us lose this game. I've watched us lose games just like that before, but today we turned the tide and got out of here with a win."
A&M-Corpus Christi finished its day with a whopping 17 hits, which went down as their third-highest single-game total of the season. Leading the way in this category was Smith, who picked up three more knocks to lift his average on the year up to .322 and his OPS up to 1.009, which currently ranks 11
th in all of the Southland. Beyond Smith, five other players recorded a multi-hit performance on Friday, with those being Kerr, Krowka, Vaughan and seniors
Isaac Webb and
Trey Cruz.
"He's playing like one of the five best hitters in the conference right now," Malone said about Smith. "We had it in the first month of the year that he was talented, but he just got in a bad spot where he couldn't get his swing consistently off. Now, he's showing what it looks like when he walks up there and gets a good swing off every time. He's built to hit in the middle of the order, he's just got to get confident and go do it, and we're seeing what's happening now."
The Islanders will now try to secure their second conference series sweep of the season in the finale against the Cardinals on Sunday, with the first pitch for that game currently scheduled for 1 p.m.
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