Texas wins challenge that Texas A&M runner interfered with throw on double play

Texas softball coach Mike White came out a big winner after challenging a play in the fourth inning of Sunday’s Regional contest against Texas A&M. After Rylen Wiggins was thrown out at second following a ground ball to third base from Allie Enright, White argued that Wiggins obstructed the throw to first preventing a double play.

The replay shows Wiggins stand up right as Longhorns second baseman Viviana Martinez makes the throw to first. Enright was originally ruled safe during live action.

Upon review of the play, however, officials decided that White was right and Enright was ruled out to make the Texas double play official and end the inning. That resulted in a huge swing in momentum as the Aggies then allowed four runs at the top of the fifth inning and Texas increased its lead to 10-2.

According to the NCAA rule book, “if a batter interferes with a fielder attempting to field a batted ball, the ball is dead, the batter-runner is out and runners return to the last base touched at the time of the pitch. If obvious attempt to break up a double play, runner closest to home is also called out.”

Things continued to spiral out of control for the Aggies as assistant Jeff Harter was ejected in the bottom of the fifth after gesturing at the umpire in an “unsportsmanlike manner.” Texas A&M managed to score three runs in the fifth to keep the game alive, but ultimately saw its season end in Regional action with an 11-5 loss.

Trisha Ford reacts to ‘crazy call’ on Texas challenge

Aggies coach Trisha Ford didn’t seem to agree with the ruling on White’s challenge. During an in-game interview, Ford said the call was “crazy,” but encouraged her team to move on and do what it can to stay keep itself alive over the next few innings.

“It’s just crazy calls,” she said on ESPN2. “We’ve just got to come back out here and put some runs up so we can keep fighting in this game.”

Ford continued, urging her team to put the call out of their minds and string together a few runs to make things interesting.

“Just focus up on things that we can’t control,” Ford said. “We can’t control a lot of things right now and things obviously kind of spiraled. So come out, let’s focus up, let’s get some runs on the board and we’ll be fine.”

However, the Aggies couldn’t overcome the deficit and saw their season end with a 35-21 record. The Longhorns advance to a Super Regional, where they’ll await the winner between Tennessee and Indiana in the Knoxville Regional.