Jim Schlossnagle reflects on experience during Stanford Regional

Texas A&M‘s baseball season came to an end Monday as they were defeated by Stanford 7-1 in their winner-take-all championship game of the Stanford Regional. The Aggies defeated Stanford in their first meeting of the regional round, but back-to-back impressive wins by the Cardinal gave them the last laugh, which Texas A&M head coach Jim Schlossnagle discussed after the loss.

“First of all congratulations to Stanford, they certainly have a really good team, really good team,” Schlossnagle said. “Impressive team, what they’ve done in the last 24, 36 hours is not easy to do because we think a lot of our team, but what they did was impressive.”

Stanford outscored Texas A&M 20-6 in their last two games, leaning on a combination of stellar offense and impressive pitching. Which was led by Stanford Quinn Matthews on Monday, who pitched four shutout innings and struck out five Aggie batters.

“Today just felt like they got one more hit than we did. We left 10 guys on, I thought Nathan (Dettmer) did great, gave us every opportunity. But what Matthews did in the middle of the game, you got to tip your cap to him, he gave up some hits but he made pitches when he had to make them,” Schlossnagle said.

The Aggies’ offense struggled on Monday, accumulating just seven hits and a single RBI as a team, and their .212 batting average for the game was their worst as a team since their SEC Tournament loss to Arkansas nearly 10 games ago.

“We couldn’t get the big hit and then they either got the big hit or had some things go their way,” Schlossnagle said. “Which that happens in baseball, the infield singles and we lose a pop up in the twilight. But they earned it, they’re a good team and we wish them the best next weekend.”

The season may not have ended the way Texas A&M wanted, but Schlossnagle is still thankful for the experience as the Aggies will watch the remainder of the NCAA Tournament from home.

“Also we’ve had just an awesome experience here, obviously losing is not what we wanted, but the experience we’ve had this week being in Palo Alto. The town, the people, people who ran the regional, everybody’s just been first class. For me having been on a regional on this side of the country, Super Regional but not a regional, and so the experience for our families was amazing, it was awesome,” Schlossnagle said.