Following a run-ruling series win over the weekend against Baylor, Texas baseball was unable to put together any kind of offensive performance against the Texas A&M Corpus Christi. The Islanders out-hit the Longhorns 7-5 and ultimately took the win, 4-1.
Texas Head Coach David Pierce took the blame for the loss, noting that he got ahead of himself as the Longhorns will go to Manhattan to play a red-hot Kansas State team starting Thursday.
“Very seldom do we play a game with the intent of looking ahead,” Pierce said. “I wouldn’t say the team was looking ahead, but I probably coached it a little bit differently just because I just feel that the K State series is really important for us to be fresh, and that’s what we did.”
To keep as many arms as active as possible, with the idea that every pitcher may be needed this weekend, Pierce played seven pitchers.
Freshman Cole Selvig got the start on the mound and through two innings, threw 31 pitches, gave up four hits including a three-run home run and struck out two batters. He was followed by redshirt sophomore Cody Howard who walked one and struck out one on 17 pitches in one inning.
“We wanted to throw a lot of arms,” Pierce said. “We had a couple of guys that were good, but we’ve got to feel like we can go play a Tuesday game and use all of our arms and then still have the opportunity to have everybody fresh for the weekend.”
Howard was followed on the mound by redshirt sophomore Luke Harrison, senior Charlie Hurley, redshirt junior Chase Lummus, redshirt junior Andre Duplantier II and redshirt sophomore Gage Boehm.
Pierce believes that the constant pitching changes are what caused the offense to be slow, and the Islanders bringing their best game did not help with that.
Texas was able to get batters on base but did not record a hit before the second out until the bottom of the eighth inning and left six stranded. The lone run came in the eighth inning when sophomore first baseman Jared Thomas got the first lead-off hit of the night.
He advanced to second on a wild pitch and then to third and home on sacrifice fly balls.
“We just hit too many fly balls,” Pierce said. “We were below the ball all night and that to me was our biggest nemesis tonight and not getting any kind of flow early.
Now, Texas will move back into conference play to face one of the hottest teams in the league, Kansas State. Pierce hopes his team will be able to move on from this loss and not linger on it for too long. An early travel day tomorrow will help with that, as the series is starting on Thursday as opposed to Friday due to Easter Sunday.
“I’m frustrated, the team’s frustrated, and I don’t want this to linger,” Pierce said. “I pulled the team together. I said, ‘Look, they played well enough to beat us tonight. We didn’t play well. But if we lingered this into the weekend, it’s gonna affect us.’”
Texas will need to channel those frustrations into hits in order to be successful in a crucial Big 12 series.
With the loss, Texas moves to 15-10 overall on the season. Kansas State is 17-6, has won nine games in a row and has not dropped a series in Big 12 play yet.
