Texas baseball coach David Pierce addresses early defensive struggles against Texas A&M

Texas baseball coach David Pierce knows his team has made a lot of mistakes early in Sunday’s elimination game against Texas A&M in the College World Series. From pitching woes to an untimely error, the Longhorns have struggled on defense and currently trail 6-2 in the bottom of the fourth inning.

Pierce pulled starting pitcher Lucas Gordon after just 1.2 innings of work in which he gave up four runs and four hits. As of the bottom of the fourth, Texas found itself on its third pitcher of the game. Despite this, the Longhorns coach knows he can’t change the mistakes, but he can turn things around with plenty of time to go.

“Lucas wasn’t as sharp as we needed him to be,” Pierce said on the ESPN broadcast. “We just needed to get out of that (inning) with just two. We’ve got a lot of guys, so we’ll just keep mixing and matching and go to the next guy if the guy in there is not hot.”

Adding insult to injury for the Longhorns was a third-inning error that allowed the Aggies to add to their lead. After Texas third baseman Skyler Messinger fielded a routine ground ball for what should have been the final out of the inning, he threw a wild ball to Ivan Melendez at first base for an error.

The ball went zooming past Melendez and into the dugout after the first baseman failed to stop it with his foot. The blunder allowed Aggies catcher Troy Claunch to advance to third and Ryan Targac to walk across home for an unearned run.

“I couldn’t tell what (the umpire) called, and then he basically said Ivan kicked the ball into the dugout as soon as he went to retrieve it,” Pierce said. “Really unfortunate because Skyler’s been so good and Ivan’s been so good. It’s just an unfortunate mistake. We’ve gotta overcome it.”

If David Pierce can lead Texas to a comeback, it would set up a matchup with either Notre Dame or Oklahoma on Tuesday. If the Longhorns are unable to overcome their early errors however, their season will be over.