CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas – The Texas A&M-Corpus Christi baseball team emerged victorious in the second game of its weekend set against McNeese on Saturday afternoon, jumping out ahead and holding on for the wire-to-wire win by the final score of 7-6.
Aiming to bounce back after dropping the opener of the series to the Cowboys on Friday, the Islanders got their offense going quickly to start the middle game of the set, scoring six combined runs by the time the fourth inning rolled along thanks in large part to a small-ball heavy approach that helped them build a big advantage early on. The first pair of these came in the second, a rally that began with a leadoff single from
Jayden Reynolds, a bunt base hit from
Christian Smith-Johnson and a sacrifice bunt by
Matt Evans that moved the first two into scoring position.
Austin Russell would then break the seal with an infield single up the middle to plate Reynolds, and
Walker Freeman followed right behind with a squeeze bunt of his own that allowed Smith-Johnson to come in as well.
Having success with the bunt the inning before, A&M-Corpus Christi went right back to the well in the third, starting with a sacrifice from Reynolds after
Jackson Smith and
Hunter Azemar had reached via a single and a walk respectively. Now back with runners on second and third, Smith-Johnson squared around for a squeeze that was placed just perfectly enough for Smith to beat the flip home, and Evans dropped one down of his own immediately after that was bobbled by the pitcher to allow Azemar to make 4-1.
The beginning of the fourth inning followed an almost identical script to the frame before, with Freeman and
Karson Krowka leading off with a single and a hit by pitch and then getting bunted over to scoring position, with this one coming from
Jarrett Flaggert. Smith would then bring in Freeman with an RBI grounder to first, and Krowka would come strolling in on a wild pitch in the next plate appearance to cap off the scoring run and increase the lead to five.
"We talked about it in our postgame that it wasn't as easy for us to create offense, so we had to do the little things all day," Islanders head coach
Scott Malone said. "We had to nickel and dime these guys. It gets a little harder when you have to create it every time, but I thought our offense did a lot of good things that you might not see in the box score."
Following this, McNeese ended up getting itself back into the game, doing so with three consecutive home runs in the top of the fifth that brought the score all the way up to 6-5. The Islanders would get one of those back in the sixth on a two-out error that allowed Smith to score from second, at which point they ended up turning things over to
Luke Singleton out of the bullpen. Entering following the departure of starter
Easten Smith, Singleton had his stuff working right away, stranding a pair of runners in his first frame before allowing just a lone single over the next two while getting a clutch double play to end the eighth. The lefty then went back out for the ninth, and despite surrendering a solo shot that brought the Cowboys to within one, he bore down and got the final two outs to secure the four-inning save for his second of the year.
"He was really good, and he's been like that for a couple of weeks since we took him out of the rotation," Malone said. "It's been a bulldog mentality with a lot of strikes. Even the ball that they hit out of the park was a really good pitch. He was really good against a tough group of hitters."
Despite recording just one extra base hit in the form of a Smith double, the Islanders won the day thanks to small ball, getting down seven bunts that went into the scoresheet as either hits or sacrifices in just their three big scoring innings alone. Smith also posted the team's only multi-hit performance of the day and was one of five different players to drive in a run, alongside Smith-Johnson, Evans, Russell and Freeman.
"I think it makes our lineup longer," Malone said about the team's approach. "We can create some offense in the middle or create some offense at the bottom and be aggressive running the bases. Try to take the game to them and make them uncomfortable. We were just good enough today to create the margin that we needed."
The Islanders will now go for a much-needed series win over McNeese in the finale of the series on Sunday, returning to action for first pitch at 1 p.m. should weather permit.
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