HOUSTON, Texas – The Texas A&M-Corpus Christi baseball team was unable to secure its second straight conference series victory in the finale of its set against Houston Christian on Sunday, getting shut out 2-0 to drop the last road game of its 2025 regular season schedule.
Despite the loss, the Islanders (17-28, 9-17 SLC) still find themselves in the hunt for the final spot in the Southland Conference Baseball Championships, remaining in a tie for eighth place with Nicholls after the Colonels also lost to New Orleans earlier in the day. The final spot will now come down to the final series of the year next weekend, with the Islanders needing to make up a game in the standings due to not possessing the tiebreaker.
After getting a pair of solid efforts on the mound from seniors
Zach Garcia and
David Dean in their doubleheader on Saturday, the Islanders received another on Sunday from freshman
Bryson Shea, who managed to record his first ever quality start at the collegiate level. Shea kept the Huskies (26-20, 17-10 SLC) in check throughout the afternoon, allowing just a lone earned run on seven hits and one walk while punching out three hitters over a season-high six innings of work. The lone blemish on the Idaho native's ledger came on a solo home run that led off the fifth inning, but other than that, he performed very well on his way to his best outing of the season so far.
On the other side of things, however, the A&M-Corpus Christi bats had their own struggles figuring out HCU starter Ben Smith, who kept them from crossing the plate a single time across six innings of his own. The Islanders were able to get traffic on the bases against the righty by tallying five hits and three walks in total, but they were unable to cash in on the opportunities that they earned themselves, stranding at least one runner in each of these frames and multiple runners in three of them. This slow start allowed the Huskies to further increase their lead late in the game, with the hosts adding an important insurance run on an RBI double two batters into the bottom of the eighth to make it 2-0.
Now facing a bigger deficit, the Islanders worked their way into one more scoring chance in the game's final frame. Freshman
Peyton Firgens was summoned off the bench as a pinch hitter to lead off the ninth and promptly dumped a base hit into left center, and after a pop out and a groundout that advanced him to second, sophomore
Jarrett Flaggert was hit by a 1-2 pitch to put the tying run on base. Both Firgens and pinch runner
Chad Pantuso would advance no further, however, as the next batter grounded out to end what was the last threat of the day.
On offense, the best performance of the day for the Islanders came from junior
Jackson Smith, who recorded the only multi-hit performance for the team while also drawing a pair of walks to reach base four times in his five plate appearances. The only extra-base hit of the game belonged to junior
Christian Smith-Johnson in the form of a double down the left field in the sixth, and rounding out the rest of the players with one knock were Firgens and seniors
Trey Cruz,
Isaac Webb and
Logan Vaughan.
The Islanders will now gear up for their most important series of the year next weekend, wrapping up the regular season with a three-game set against New Orleans starting on Thursday. The first two games are scheduled to start at 6 p.m., while the finale on Saturday is set to kick off at 1 p.m.
#ShakasUp
