By Alan Wiederhold-Sohn
Sports Information Director
AUSTIN – Huston-Tillotson University's baseball team overcame a seven-run deficit to win game one of the Rams' Friday doubleheader with Jarvis Christian 8-7 before dropping the second game by a score of 6-5.
Eight different Rams players collected RBIs in Friday's victory. Jarvis Christian led 7-0 before the Rams began to claw their way back into the contest thanks to timely hitting and key Bulldog defensive miscues.
Steel Kupec pitched four shutout innings of relief to pick up the win for Huston-Tillotson in the seven-inning opener. He allowed only one hit to the 14 batters he faced and improved his season record to 2-1.
Rowen Guerra pitched a scoreless seventh inning to claim his first save of the season.
The floodgates opened on Jarvis' lead in the bottom of the second inning when the Bulldog infield committed an error on
Josh Wilk's groundball with one out and one runner on base.
Noah Alvarez then opened HT's scoring with an RBI single that scored
Danny Hernandez.
Luke Vizcarra then claimed an RBI on a successful suicide squeeze play when his sacrifice bunt scored Wilk from third base.
Adam Sheehan and
Gary Wafford then knocked successive RBI singles to cut the Jarvis lead to 7-4 before the Bulldogs finally got out of the inning.
Wilk's RBI single in the bottom of the third scored
Robbie Brue from third base.
Brian Gardner then cut the Jarvis lead to one with an RBI single in the fourth that scored Sheehan.
In the bottom of the sixth, Brue hit a one-out single that scored Wafford from second base and tied the game. After Brue stole second base – his second steal of the game – he then moved to third on Gardner's groundout. The next batter Hernandez, who was making his first start of the season, picked up the game-winning RBI with a single up the middle to score Brue.
Brue had three hits in the opener, while Wafford, Alvarez, and Sheehan collected two hits apiece.
GAME TWO: Jarvis Christian 6, HT Rams 5
A five-run sixth inning by Jarvis Christian erased Huston-Tillotson's four-run lead as the Bulldogs salvaged the doubleheader split.
Wafford, Brue, Hernandez, and Alvarez collected two hits apiece in Friday's second contest, while Sheehan's two-RBI single in the bottom of the fifth gave the Rams a 2-1 lead as part of a four-run inning for HT.
The Rams had tying runners on base in the bottom of the sixth and eighth innings but were turned away each time.
Jalen Thomas, who hit a three-run homerun for Jarvis Christian in the opening game, was the winner on the mound in game two.
Rece Houghton took the loss in relief for the Rams.
Luke Almendarez pitched three scoreless innings of relief for Huston-Tillotson.
– HT –
