EDINBURG, Texas – The Texas A&M-Corpus Christi baseball team survived and advanced in its first elimination game of the Southland Conference Baseball Championship on Saturday afternoon, coming alive offensively and taking down No. 3 Lamar by a final score of 12-5.
The win was the first in the conference tournament for the Islanders since 2022, when they went to Hammond and knocked off second-seeded Southeastern in their first-round matchup that year. It also gave them a measure of revenge over the Cardinals, as it was their first victory in the series this season after they were swept in Beaumont back in late March.
Staring down the barrel of a do-or-die scenario, the Islanders came out with a high level of energy on Friday, trading punches with Lamar from the jump and escaping the scrum with an early lead. After surrendering a run in the top of the first inning, they would respond by scoring a pair of their own in the bottom half, doing so on an RBI single by senior
Trey Cruz and a run-scoring error on a ground ball off the bat of freshman
Peyton Firgens. The Cardinals would then tie the game back up in their next time up, but A&M-Corpus Christi would respond with one of its own right after on a sacrifice fly from junior
Jackson Smith.
From here, the Islanders would put together their first big outburst of the day by taking advantage of some poor defense by the Lamar infield, capitalizing on three two-out errors in the third inning alone to add some more runs and take control of the game. The rally began because of these miscues, with the first allowing senior
Cade Sanchez to reach base and the second enabling both Sanchez and Firgens to score on a
Logan Vaughan grounder that was misplayed by the Cardinals first baseman. The final error loaded the bases up two batters later, which helped the team bring in its third run of the inning on a four-pitch walk from Smith that made it a 6-2 game.
The story of the game in the middle innings was the resilience of the A&M-Corpus Christi bats, with the group responding to any sort of positive stretch by Lamar with a bigger one of their own right after. After a Lamar run in the top of the fourth, the Islanders quickly nipped this momentum in the bud with three more in the bottom half of the frame, scoring on an RBI single from Sanchez and back-to-back RBI groundouts from Vaughan and junior
Karson Krowka. A similar story played out in the sixth as well, with the Cardinals putting up two runs in their half of the frame that were immediately answered by another three-spot that came via a
Drake Kerr single, a wild pitch and a Smith RBI groundout brought the team into double digits on the day.
The scoring made life a whole lot easier on senior starter
Zach Garcia, who battled through 5.1 innings on 110 pitches while allowing just three earned runs despite giving up 12 hits on the day. After Garcia's departure, the ball was then handed to senior
Cam Soliz, who would proceed to take the game to its conclusion all by himself, keeping the Cardinals off the scoreboard entirely through the final 3.2 innings of play to earn his fourth save of the season in what was arguably the best performance of his two-year career with the program. The righty allowed just two hits and one walk during his outing, and he got better as he went along, facing the minimum from the seventh inning on to slam the door shut and help the Islanders keep their season alive.
On offense, A&M-Corpus Christi was powered by the top of its order, with the 1-4 of Kerr, Smith, senior
Isaac Webb and Cruz combining to go 6-19 with five RBI and three runs scored. The bottom of the lineup also managed to provide a spark of its own, as both Sanchez and Krowka set the table by reaching base three times apiece out of the seven and nine holes respectively.
The Islanders will now get their runback against No. 2 UTRGV on Saturday, taking on the Vaqueros again at 1 p.m. after being knocked into the lower bracket by the hosts on Thursday. With a win, they would then turn right back around to square off with No. 6 Houston Christian in the finals of the Edinburg region, with that game starting just a few hours later at 6 p.m.
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