CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas – The Texas A&M-Corpus Christi baseball team was taken down by Cal State Bakersfield in its first game of the 2026 Kleberg Bank College Classic on Friday evening, playing tight but falling victim to the long ball and dropping by a final score of 7-4 as a result.
In contrast to how the end of the game would turn out, the start of the day at Whataburger Field began in a pitcher's duel, with junior
Preston Watkins coming firing on all cylinders for the Islanders (4-2) and Ryan King doing the same for the Roadrunners (3-3). For the hosts, Watkins began his day as well as he could have, sitting down the side in order in each of his first three innings of work while punching out four CSUB hitters. On the other side, though, King managed to work around some early trouble in the first to do the same, stranding a pair of runners in the opening frame before facing the minimum in the next two.
The first breakthrough for either team came in the fourth inning, and it favored A&M-Corpus Christi in the form of one big swing from senior
Jackson Smith. As the first batter of the inning, Smith stepped up to the plate and unloading on a 1-0 offering, taking an up-and-in heater and pulling it over the fence in right field for a solo home run to put the team on the board. This was Smith's second home run so far in 2026, breaking a tie with three other players for the most on the team on the young season.
The Roadrunners would answer back after this with a two-run blast of their own in the top of the fifth to take their first lead of the game, but in the bottom half of the frame, the Islanders punched back themselves with a two-out rally to level things back up. Freshman
Jake Barron started things off with a hit-by-pitch, and after senior
Christian Smith-Johnson kept the line moving with a base hit into left center, graduate
Austin Russell cashed in with a base hit that fell right in front of the right fielder to plate Barron and make it a 2-2 game.
The pendulum would continue to swing back and forth from here, with CSUB regaining its lead with a solo home run and an RBI single in the sixth before the Islanders once again responded, getting back to within one on a two-out RBI single from junior
Matt Evans in the sixth and pulling even once again in the seventh after pinch runner
Jayden Reynolds raced home from third after a pickoff throw to first hit the dirt and bounced just far enough away from the first baseman. Unfortunately for the home team, however, they could not keep the Roadrunners in the ballpark, surrendering two more longballs in the final two frames as well as a run-scoring single put them down by three, their largest deficit of the night. A&M-Corpus Christi did get a runner to third in the final frame, but it could not start the rally it needed to come back once again.
Despite the loss, the Islanders had four different players record multi-hit games on the day, with the honors going to Russell, Smith, Evans and graduate
Cade Sanchez. In addition to this group, Barron also reached base three times, doing so with a walk and two hit-by-pitches.
The Islanders will now head right back to Whataburger Field trying to pick up their first win of this year's Kleberg Bank College Classic, squaring off with another California team in Long Beach State on Saturday at 6 p.m.
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