Vaqueros rally attempt falls short in SLC tournament game

Ivan Palacios | Staff Writer

EDINBURG — UTRGV’s baseball team found itself in familiar territory during their Southland Conference tournament game against Houston Christian.

For the second night in a row, the Vaqueros fell behind early, trailing the Huskies by seven runs after two innings.

Thursday’s game ended in a win for UTRGV, rallying to beat Texas A&M Corpus Christi. The comeback didn’t happen Friday, however, with the Vaqueros falling 9-6 to the Huskies at UTRGV Baseball Stadium in Edinburg.

The loss puts UTRGV up against the wall heading into Saturday, needing to win three games over the next two days to secure a spot in the Southland Conference championship series.

“When you lose all that momentum and give up all those runs early, it is so hard for your offense to come back,” UTRGV head coach Derek Matlock said. “It lets their pitching staff relax because they have such a big lead. We nibbled back and fought back in there, but then we made that big error. If we could’ve went into the last inning only down by one, then we could have had a chance because it is a lot of pressure on them. Like I told them before this thing started, we gotta win the series. It is all about winning the series. That is what we’ve done all year long. Tomorrow at one we’ gotta win the series. Then we gotta get right back at it and give ourselves a chance at six.”

The Huskies pounced on the Vaqueros during the bottom of the second, bringing in seven runs on eight hits to take a commanding 7-0 lead.

Houston Christian’s offensive outburst led to a pair of pitching changes for UTRGV, with Caden Wanless replacing Jacob Limas in the second, followed by Jack Lopez replacing Wanless in the third.

Lopez’s entry into the game helped spark the Vaqueros’ rally attempt, with the relief pitcher pitching 4.2 scoreless innings to keep UTRGV’s hopes alive.

With the Huskies in check, the Vaqueros began to give signs of a comeback during the top of the fifth, with Jacob Sanchez bringing in UTRGV’s first run of the game to make it 1-0.

A five-run sixth inning cut UTRGV’s deficit to just one. Freshman Cameron Carter kicked off the big inning for the Vaqueros, bringing in Thomas Williams to start the scoring.

Isaac Lopez, Armani Raygoza and Steven Lancia each added RBI singles during the inning to make it 7-6.

Disaster struck during the ensuing inning, however, with an error by UTRGV allowing a pair of runners to score for HCU to make it 9-6.

The Vaqueros couldn’t recover after the mistake, with the Huskies holding on to punch their ticket to the championship game of Southland Conference Tournament’s Edinburg Bracket.

“We got to have a good start,” Matlock said. “You got to have a good start because then the pressure will be on them. All year long when we’ve had a good start, we’ve won. We had a really bad start tonight and you can’t come back from it. Not against high caliber teams that are trying to win something. Now they’re in the championship. We gotta have a good start now tomorrow.”

The Vaqueros will look to stave off elimination in a rematch against Texas A&M Corpus Christi at 1 p.m. Saturday. The Islanders defeated Lamar 12-5 earlier Friday to keep themselves alive.

The winner between the two teams will face off against Houston Christian at 6 p.m. Saturday. The Huskies can secure the SLC championship series berth from the Edinburg bracket with a win Saturday. A loss to the Islanders or Vaqueros, however, sets up a desicive final game at 1 p.m. Sunday.

“We have a good enough team to do it,” Matlock said. “That is why we won the conference. Anybody can have a bad game. That’s why you play a series on the weekend. We just had a bad game. Now we got to get back to moving and win the series. We’ve done it all year long. We’ve swept them and won them. We’ve got to win the series tomorrow at one. Then focus on the championship game and push them to another game and double dip them. It is all right there for us to get.

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