LAWTON, Okla. – After a almost four hour rain delay, the Aggie baseball teams fall 15-14 to the Tarleton Texans in the series finale, splitting the four-game set.
The Cameron Aggies entered game one with hopes to capture just their second series win in their 2020 campaign. After a tone-setting Friday night victory and a Saturday doubleheader split, the Black and Gold were in prime position to take the series.
Tyler Garcia would get the nod to start the series finale but would record just a single out. The Texans would rough Garcia up for five runs in the first frame.
Drew Henderson came on to limit the damage in the first inning and then held the big-bats of Tarleton silent for three more after that.
In the bottom half of the second, the Aggies got back in the contest with one swing of the bat. Redshirt-sophomore
Erik Ohman launched a grand slam to left center-field to pull his team within one run of the Texans.
Nate Pecota came up the very next inning to tie the game up with an RBI double that scored
Nik Sanchez in the bottom of the third. The Black and Gold scoring was not done in that frame, as
Ricardo Farias came up to send his own homer over the left center-field wall, which also brought home Pecota to give the Aggies a two-run lead; that homer was Farias' first hit of the season.
The Aggies would score again in the fourth inning when Pecota earned his second RBI of the day, plating
Beau Williams on a single that was dumped into right field.
Henderson threw up three straight zero's, before working into a bit of a jam in the fifth inning. The Texans saw two runners get aboard with less than two outs before Henderson eventually hit his second batter of the frame. That loaded the bases with less than two outs before Henderson balked home a Texan run.
Williams called
Tyler Cornett out of the pen to try and escape a bases-loaded, two-out jam, and preserve the 5th inning lead. The bullpen arm for the clipped a TSU batter to push across another run before the CU hurler punched out the next batter to get out of the inning. The Black and Gold still held an 8-7 lead.
Tarleton came right back in the top of the 6th to tie the ball game up on a sac-fly off the bat of Blake Burns.
Cameron responded with a six-run bottom of the sixth that featured a
Jayce Clem RBI single and an
Izrael Trevino two-RBI double with the Aggies scoring a run via a hit by pitch and a walk.
After a six-run inning from the Texans in the seventh, the ball game was all tied up again at 14. That was when the game went into about a four hour rain delay before resuming after 9 p.m.
After the multi-hour rain delay, the Aggies turned to
Kalen Haynes to try and hold this Texan lineup. Haynes pitched a perfect eighth inning, striking two in the frame, but ran into trouble when he hit the second batter in the frame. An RBI triple from Blake Burns with two outs and the gave the Texans their first lead since the third inning heading into the final frame.
In a game that saw four lead changes, the Aggies had no more late-game heroics left after the marathon. Despite two-out walk by Pecota, CU was shut down in the bottom of the ninth, leading to the series split.
Cameron will be on the road for their Spring Break opening weekend, visiting UAFS and former head coach Todd Holland for four games, March 13-15.
