HCU mistakes and strong bullpen lead Texas to comfortable 7-1 victory in Game 1 of the Austin Regional.

Today didn’t feel like your normal ceremonious first win of an Austin Regional. Between a one-day-old batter’s eye, a gridlocked parking lot and the home team playing at 1 P.M., everything felt a little off at the Disch today.

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Maybe that played a bit into how the Houston Christian Huskies played, as despite a strong pitching performance from senior Parker Edwards, the Huskies gave up seven runs in the first five innings. Oddly enough for Edwards, who pitched into the fifth, only one of those was earned.

Texas utilized the energetic crowd and three errors from the Husky infield to cruise to a 7-1 victory to kick off the Austin Regional, advancing them to the winners bracket while still preserving some of its best arms.

“Our fans were phenomenal. They’ve been great all year,” winning pitcher Grayson Saunier said. “This is actually my first regional, so I was pumped to get out there and go compete. I was kind of itching to get out there. So, yes, it felt like a normal game, a regular game. And I think that’s just what we’ve been trying to teach and say all year, treat everything like it’s opening day.”

This game ended up being more or less decided in a chaotic and erratic fifth inning for the Longhorns. Texas had just one hit in the first four innings, the most notable of which being the first, where Ethan Mendoza was gunned down at the plate after a superb throw from right field ended the inning.

The fifth inning started with an error from 2B Jeremy Rader on a ground ball from LF Jonah Williams, his second of the game. On the very next pitch, Williams used his football speed to try to take second on a steal. Covering the front of the bag, Rader and Williams met at the base in a scary collision, keeping the Huskies’ only RBI contributor glued to the ground for over two minutes after the fact.

The crowd broke into applause as he got up on his own weight, but the replay looked just as scary. A cleat to the shoulder area was more than enough to take him out of the game for good as he headed into the Texas locker room. HCU head coach Clay VanderLaan said they don’t know the severity yet, but he did injury his collarbone.

Following the stoppage, the Horns still had some work to do. 2B Ethan Mendoza fought off an 0-2 pitch and muscled it into right. With two RISP after a steal, Texas looked to be in the perfect spot given that top hitters Rylan Galvan and Max Belyeu were up to hit. Galvan’s AB resulted in a flyout that didn’t bring Williams home (they weren’t testing that RF anymore) and Belyeu struck out looking. Suddenly, a potential rally looked all too familiarly shut down because of poor swinging from the Horns.

1B Kimble Schuessler had to deliver, and it didn’t take much time for that to happen. First-pitch swinging, Schuessler laced a ball into right. He almost hit it too hard, as Mendoza was nearly caught at the plate, not sliding on the two-RBI single. Still, Texas was now up three runs in the bottom of the fifth thanks to Schuessler.

“We trust our offense a lot, and I think it was the fifth inning when we scored five runs and somebody needed to come up with a big hit,” Schuessler said about his AB. “We were able to get some guys on base, and then we were able to come up with that big hit and just kind of get the offense rolling. So I think that’s kind of what we needed, and we’re going to build that momentum heading into tomorrow.”

Unfortunately for the Huskies, the damage would continue in the inning, as 2B Adrian Rodriguez knocked Schuessler (who had advanced to second on his single) in for a run. Next, SS Jalin Flores scorched a ball right at the 3B, who made a great play to knock the ball down but rushed a throw to first on a throwing error. Flores was safe, and the hit would later be awarded instead of an error.

Texas kept on pushing, as back-to-back singles from 3B Casey Borba and CF Will Gasparino brought the run total to seven on the inning. A warning track out from Williams in the same inning he had already scored on was the only thing keeping HCU away from more problems.

With the Horns up 7-1, Texas looked to RHP Hudson Hamilton to secure the final 11 outs of the game. Saunier had thrown most of the game’s pitches up till that point, taking the place of Ethan Walker after a seven-batter opener spot, but gave up back-to-back one-out base hits that could’ve potentially started a sixth-inning rally for the Huskies.

Schlossnagle called on Hamilton, who had only thrown 11 innings all season, to get out of the jam. A first batter walk didn’t help his case, but picking off the lead-runner at third and striking out the final out of the inning a few pitches later electrified the crowd. With momentum behind him, he worked efficiently through the rest of the HCU lineup, giving up no runs on one hit, one walk and four strikeouts in 3 2/3 innings pitched

Schlossnagle’s utilization of his pitching staff will be extremely beneficial down the stretch. Entering this game, Saunier, Walker and Hamilton had the seventh, 11th and 13th most IP among the staff in conference games. The impact of being able to save all of your top five arms, emergency starters like Kade Bing and Jason Flores and your most experienced pitcher in Andre Duplantier II for the rest of the regional cannot be understated.

“We wanted Walker to preferably get through the lineup once, but at the same time, he’s a good fit for some of the other teams in this tournament, so we kind of wanted to get him in, get him out. I did think he was a little, what we call soggy. The stuff wasn’t as crisp as it was last week,” head coach Jim Schlossnagle said. “We knew when we got to a lead we wanted to go to Hamilton. He’s done a really good job of throwing strikes, both with his fastball and that little cutter-slider pitch that he has, and with Houston Christian and the wind blowing in, strikes are always paramount. They have a good team but there’s not a ton of home run damage in their lineup. So it was just way more about strikes than it was swing and miss stuff.”

While the Longhorns didn’t crack through offensively the way you might’ve wanted in a game against a team like HCU, seven hits and five free bases may be enough to score four or five against higher-level opponents, with Texas’ pitching staff able to do the rest.

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The Longhorns will face the winner of UTSA vs Kansas State at 8 PM CT tomorrow at the Disch, with the winner putting themselves in a drastically advantageous spot to advance to the Super Regionals.