Box Score - Photo Gallery KINGSVILLE – The Tarleton State Texan baseball team scored five runs in the top of the sixth inning to break a 1-1 tie and then went on to defeat West Texas A&M 8-4 in the first game of the Lone Star Conference Baseball Championships at Nolan Ryan Filed in Kingsville.
The Texans move to 27-22 overall with the victory and are now 4-3 against WT all-time in the LSC Tournament. WT fell to 33-18 overall with the loss and have now dropped eight of its last 11 games.
WT's Matt Redfearn led off the bottom of the first inning with a single and later scored on a single through the right side from Tyler McKnight, which gave the Buffs an early 1-0 lead.
Tarleton would later tie the game in the top of the fourth inning on
Garrett Kilgore's sacrifice fly as
Rustin Thomas, who singled earlier in the inning, came around to score on the fly out from the Texan first baseman.
WT starting pitcher Dylan James exited the game after the fifth inning and Kilgore would take new WT pitcher, Sam Ouellet, deep for a solo home run to give the Texans a 2-1 lead. Tarleton would bat around in the inning, as
Evan Robinson,
Alvaro Moreno, Thomas and
Nick Gibert each drove in runs and Tarleton led 6-1.
The Buffs would look to respond in the bottom of the inning, loading the bases with just one out, but Scott Baker fanned the next two WT batters, Tyler McKnight and David Hebert, to end the threat and get out of the inning.
WT would load the bases in the bottom of the seventh inning, which led to
Garrett Kelly relieving Baker, but Kelly would yield a hit to the first batter he faced and an error later in the inning allowed the Buffs to score three runs and pull within two runs of the Texans, down 6-4.
Dalton Weeks added a pair of insurance runs for the Texans in the top of the ninth inning as he blasted his second home run of the season, a two-run shot that extended Tarleton's lead to 8-4.
Kelly would yield a single and a walk in the bottom of the ninth, but would later get McKnight to fly out to centerfield to end the game and move into Friday's second round.
Baker would get the win for the Texans on the mound, giving up just he four runs on five hits and striking out five to improve to 7-6 overall.
Ouellet was charged with the loss, giving up five runs on five hits in just 1/3 of an inning and falling to 2-2 on the year.
Kilgore and Meredith both had three hits each on the day and both players scored a run as well. Kilgore drove in two of Tarleton's two runs, as did Weeks on his home run shot.
The Texans will play the winner of the Texas A&M-Kingsivlle/Angelo State contest at 3 p.m. on Friday. Live stats and a live webcast will be provided by JavelinaAthletics.com and the game will be aired live on 90.5 FM KTRL or by logging onto www.kxtr.net.
