NACOGDOCHES, Texas – The Texas A&M-Corpus Christi baseball team came away with another win over Stephen F. Austin on Monday afternoon, holding on down the stretch and earning the victory by a final score of 6-4 to lock up a sweep of the three-game road series.
The sweep was the second of the season for the Islanders (13-21, 5-10 SLC) in a series of at least three games, with the other one coming at home against Prairie View A&M in a weekend set from February 28-March 2. It was also their first sweep of a conference series since the 2022 campaign, when they took three games in a row from Nicholls at Chapman Field on May 6-8 of that year.
After trading punches for 16 innings just hours before, the two teams picked up right where they left off on Monday, going back and forth from the very beginning of things. Getting on the board first were the Islanders, who started off the scoring in the second when after senior
Isaac Webb and sophomore
Jarrett Flaggert led off the frame with a single and a double, junior
Christian Smith-Johnson drove home the former with an RBI groundout to make it 1-0. Like the day before, though, the Lumberjacks (9-23, 2-13 SLC) quickly answered back, tying things back up in the bottom half of the inning on a solo home run and then taking their first lead of the day in the third on another homer, this one a two-run shot that brought the score to 3-1.
Now facing a deficit for the first time since the eighth inning on Sunday, A&M-Corpus Christi got its comeback effort going, starting with its first sustained rally of the day in the sixth. Three consecutive singles from senior
Cade Sanchez, Webb and Flaggert to lead off the inning quickly loaded the bases, and in the next plate appearance, senior
Stephen Hom came off the bench as a pinch hitter and drew a walk to bring in Sanchez. Right after that, Smith-Johnson came through in a big spot for the second day in a row, lifting a sacrifice fly out to left field deep enough to score Webb from third and even things back up once again.
From here, the two continued their game of tug-of-war, with the Islanders taking the lead in the top of the seventh on a two-out RBI knock off the bat of Sanchez before SFA responded in similar fashion in the bottom half of the frame to tie the score up at four. Back level for the third time, A&M-Corpus Christi finally managed to land the knockout blow in the eighth, rallying again for a pair of runs to take a 6-4 lead. The first of these scored when after Flaggert, Smith-Johnson and senior
Chance Reisdorph reached via a hit and two walks, a wild pitch allowed Flaggert to race home from third, and the much-needed insurance run scored on a sacrifice fly from senior
Drake Kerr soon after.
The task of protecting this advantage would fall to a pair of relievers, starting with freshman
Tristan Crane, who got the first out of the ninth before being lifted after allowing a pair of runners to reach base. Sophomore
Matthew Molina then entered with the tying run on second base and proceeded to slam the door shut on just two pitches, getting a line drive double play on his first batter faced to strand both runners and earn the first save of his collegiate career.
On offense, the Islanders managed to rack up another 12 hits, which brought their total for the series up to a whopping 51 in just three games. Leading the way in that department was senior
Austin Russell, who went a perfect 4-4 while also drawing a walk to reach base in all five of his plate appearances on the day. Flaggert continued his excellent weekend by picking up three hits in his four at-bats to bring his line up to 9-17 with three extra-base hits and four RBIs in the series, and rounding out the multi-hit efforts were Sanchez and Webb with two knocks each.
The Islanders will now head back home to prepare for their next conference series over the weekend, playing host to Southeastern Louisiana for a trio of games at Chapman Field. The first of these will take place on Friday, with first pitch currently scheduled for 6 p.m.
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