Texas State Baseball Survives Little Rock Thursday
The setback began Wednesday night but was halted in the fourth inning due to rain. The two teams closed out the highest-scoring game in SBC Championship history Thursday, May 24, morning.
LAFAYETTE, La. – The Texas State baseball team eliminated Little Rock from the 2018 Sun Belt Conference Championship with a 6-3 victory Thursday night at Russo Park.
The No. 6-seeded Bobcats (29-27-1) have advanced to the next round, where they will face either No. 2 Louisiana or No. 3 Troy in another elimination contest at 6:30 p.m. May 25.
This also marked the second-straight year the Trojans (28-28) season ended at the hands of the maroon and gold.
LR – playing its third game of the tournament as the No. 7 seed – came into Thursday’s tilt on the heels of a marathon 19-16 loss to the Ragin’ Cajuns.
The setback began Wednesday night but was halted in the fourth inning due to rain. The two teams closed out the highest-scoring game in SBC Championship historyThursday, May 24, morning.
The Trojans continued to light up the scoreboard with a pair of first-inning runs, but a two-out RBI single in the home half of the frame from junior Jaylen Hubbard plated classmate Jonathan Ortega to cut the deficit in half.
After the two offenses calmed down for the next three frames, the maroon and gold pushed into a 4-2 advantage thanks in part to a two-RBI triple from true freshman Dalton Shuffield.
Shuffield and senior Luke Sherley later executed a double steal for the third run of the inning.
Little Rock got within one in the top of the sixth, but Texas State pulled away with two insurance tallies in the bottom of the seventh.
The Trojans ran out of gas and were unable to touch home in any of the final three stanzas.
Hubbard finished 2-for-3 with two RBIs. Shuffield also drove in two runs. Sherley tied the school record for career games played, as he took the field for the 219th time in his illustrious career.
Junior Connor Reich (6-3) earned the win on the mound after allowing three runs (two earned) on just four hits in the first 5.1 innings.
He struck out five and walked just three. Fellow junior Braden Pearson pitched the final 3.2 frames and did not give up a run to collect his second save of the year.
He gave up just two hits, while fanning three and walking none.
Troy Alexander and Nick Perez had two hits each to lead the Trojans. Alexander also finished with two runs scored and an RBI.
Starting pitcher Aaron Funk (2-1) suffered his first loss of the year after giving up four runs on five hits in 4.2 innings of work. Ethan Daily, McKinley Moore and Perez combined to pitch the rest of the game. The trio of relievers allowed two runs on one hit.
TXST committed an error in the sixth inning, which snapped a seven-game errorless streak for the Bobcats.
The mark was the longest in the Sun Belt this season, and it stretched across 70 innings and 297 batters faced.
The game-by-game statistics for Texas State go back to 2003, and the longest stretch of games without an error during that time is four early in the 2006 campaign.
Score by Innings R H E
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Little Rock……… 200 001 000 – 3 6 1
Texas State……… 100 030 20X – 6 6 1
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Win – Reich, C. (6-3). Loss – Funk, A. (2-1). Save – Pearson, B. (2).
