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Tuesday - April 21, 2009

Game 38: Rice at Texas

Eh. Today's game wasn't much fun. The Horns lost to Rice 4-7. It was just one of those days. It seemed like every ball the Horns hit went right to a Rice fielder. And too many of the balls Rice hit were just 2 or 3 inches away from the outstretched glove of a Texas fielder. Rice hit two or three balls down the line that were fair by 3 or 4 inches. Texas hit two or three balls down the line that were foul by 3 or 4 inches. The Rice center fielder (Steven Sultzbaugh) made a fantastic diving catch in the 7th to rob Tant Shepherd of a single. When Connor Rowe had a similar chance in the top of the 8th, the ball nicked off the tip of his glove and fell for an rbi-single. Frustration City.

Anyway...starting line-ups for today's game:

Rice	Texas
1 Brock Holt, 2b 2 Jimmy Comerota, 1b 3 Rick Hague, ss 4 Anthony Rendon, 3b 5 Diego Seastrunk, dh 6 Ryan Lewis, rf 7 Michael Fuda, lf 8 Craig Manuel, c 9 Steven Sultzbaugh, cf - Abel Gonzalez, p	1 Travis Tucker, 2b 2 Michael Torres, 3b 3 Brandon Belt, 1b 4 Tant Shepherd, lf 5 Kevin Keyes, rf 6 Cameron Rupp, dh 7 Preston Clark, c 8 Brandon Loy, ss 9 Connor Rowe, cf - Cole Green, p

I missed the first inning. I did listen on the radio, though. I guess that first inning for Texas at the plate set the stage for the rest of the game. Tucker and Torres reached on back-to-back 4-pitch walks. With a 1-1 count, both runners took off. Belt, swung away and hit a hard liner to lf. Tucker was doubled off (7-4) quite easily. Keith Moreland said he was sure Belt had missed the sign...that there was no way he would've done that with the runners taking off they way they did if he'd seen the sign correctly. Shepherd then struck out looking. And, so it went.

It was "Johnny All-Staff" on the mound today (as Moreland likes to say). Cole Green got the start and had a great 1-2-3 first inning. He got into trouble in the 2nd and gave up two runs, though, to take the loss and drop his record to 3-1 on the year. He pitched the first 2 innings. Kendal Carrillo gave up 3 runs (1 unearned) in 2.1 innings. Andrew McKirahan went 1.1 and gave up a run. Stayton Thomas also gave up a run in 1.2 innings. Chance Ruffin threw the final 1.2 without yielding any runs.

The team did have their moments. Keyes and Clark hit a couple of beautiful doubles in the 2nd. The crowd loved it when Belt and Shepherd scored on wild pitches in the 5th. But sadly, for the most part, the Horns just couldn't get enough things to go their way today. Too many walks (12) and too few hits (5 in the game, none in the final 3 innings). Which is a terrible shame.

The next three days are going to be killer at work so I'm not gonna spend any more time on this game report tonight. I'll just point you to the official report and the box with play-by-play on the TexasSports.com page.

Here's the line (from GameTracker):

By the way, I pulled up GameTracker to grab the line and saw that Nebraska and Creighton were playing in the 12th at Creighton. Nebraska went on to win 4-3. Both teams scored single runs in the 5th and did not score again 'til the 12th. Wow.

And, now we look forward to getting back to conference play as Kansas State comes to town this weekend. I may miss the early part of the first KSU game (did I mention it's a busy week at work this week?) but will be there for the Saturday and Sunday games. And, I'll have my camera with me for at least one of 'em. Go, Horns!

Posted by Joanna at 11:06 PM