The Bobcats come out on top busting out in the late innings to take out the Prairie View A&M Panthers 18-6, but things weren’t a breeze.
The Bobcat Baseball team has been riding high lately coming into tonight’s game winning 14 out of their last 16 games. Prairie View was the Cats opponent a little over two weeks ago when Texas State went for a record 33 runs.
Well the Bobcats started out this game the same way they finished off the last game against the Panthers scoring four runs in the first inning. Three up three down for the Panthers and in the home half of the first the Bobcat bats came alive. Tyler Sibley singled up the gut and after Bret Atwood walked Paul Goldschmidt stepped up to the plate. A double to the wall drove in both of the speedy runners. Just in case that wasn’t enough Spenser Dennis walked up to the plate and took one deep over the left field fence for a two run homerun. So four batters had come to the plate and all four had come home to score. That was the only runs scored in the inning and if the Bobcats hadn’t looked past this game before it started, they certain must have started to now.
The next inning starting pitcher Matt Steiner walked two batters who were brought home on a triple by the Panther’s first baseman Jason Thomas. After another walk Steiner got himself out of the inning but that would be the end of the road for the young freshman.
The Bobcats managed to score one more run in the bottom of the second without getting a hit. An error allowed Bret Atwood to g0 to second just before he advanced to third on a wild pitch. He later scored on a sacrifice fly by Goldschmidt to make the score 5-2.
In the top of the third Prairie View started to mount their comeback scoring one run off of Tim Heath. Both teams went scoreless over the next three half innings with the Bobcats leaving three runners on base until the top of the fifth came around.
The Panthers three consecutive singles scored one run to start out the fifth and Tyler Brundridge came in to relieve Heath. After advancing the runners to second and third, one more single tied the game up at five. This is where the Texas State fans started getting a bit nervous specifically after a quick bottom of the fifth that came and went for the Bobcats without a hit.
Bryant Rutledge replaced Brundridge and promptly hit the first batter of the inning. The next batter popped up a bunt to the first base side of the mound. Goldschmidt came over from first base and him and Rutledge stared each other down in what seemed like a slightly awkward moment as the ball fell to the ground. After another single the bases were loaded with no outs and the Bobcats were really in trouble. The next pitch was hit to left field for a sacrifice fly but the runner on second base got caught up in a run down and Rutledge got him out. Prairie View took the lead on the run, but the Bobcats had two outs with a runner on first and managed to get out of the inning.
If anyone was wondering if the Bobcats would respond, the answer was “yes.” A single by Atwood followed by a walk by Goldschmidt set things up for Dennis. Another bomb over left field and Dennis had his second homerun of the ball game and five RBIs. Things went relatively crazy from there. Over the next two innings Texas State would score 12 on ten hits to lead 17-6.
Starting off the bottom of the eighth inning, none other than Spenser Dennis stepped back up to the plate. With two homeruns already in the game nobody truly expected what would come next. Dennis took one deep once again over the left field wall tying a Texas State record set in 1987 with three homeruns in one ball game. Also his three homeruns tonight matched his season total from last season. He now shares or holds three records at Texas State all of which were set against Prairie View A&M.
The Bobcats improve to 25-10 on the season and are headed on the road to face off against Northwestern State for another three game conference series this weekend. After that Texas State heads back to Waco to face off against the Baylor Bears. The game time has been changed to Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. You can catch that game on 89.9 KTSW.
Dalton Sweat- KTSW Sports Staff Writer
No comments:
Post a Comment