After a second straight late-inning Friday meltdown in SEC play, the No. 2 Texas Longhorns needed to find a way to close out an important road victory against the No. 5 Auburn Tigers at Plainsman Park on Saturday.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t easy in the 7-6 win, as a pitching staff considered historically elite by a credible observer like Baylor head coach Mitch Thompson, a longtime assistant for the Bears and Central Texas junior college head coach, once again showed significant cracks to heighten the long-term concerns about the upside of head coach Jim Schlossnagle\u2019s team.<\/p>\n
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Taking a 7-2 lead into the seventh inning, the Horns stuck with senior right-hander Max Grubbs after the Texas bullpen stalwart took over for redshirt senior left-hander Luke Harrison to record the final out in the sixth inning.<\/p>\n
Grubbs was close to cruising through the seventh after retiring the first two batters on eight pitches before hanging an 0-1 breaking ball that turned into a 420-foot home run.<\/p>\n
A nine-pitch at bat resulted in a full-count walk and a 2-1 single put runners on first and second as Schlossnagle turned to freshman right-hander Brett Crossland, who got ahead of the next two batters, but gave up consecutive 1-2 singles through the right side to score two more runs.<\/p>\n
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In the eighth inning, freshman right-hander Sam Cozart receive a high-leverage opportunity, hitting the leadoff batter on his second pitch before bouncing back to record two outs. Like Grubbs, Cozart couldn\u2019t finish the inning, allowing a first-pitch single that ended his outing with runners on first and third.<\/p>\n
The ostensible closer for Texas, junior right-hander Thomas Burns, entered the game and gave up a 1-1 RBI single and threw a wild pitch before stranding two runners with a six-pitch strikeout.<\/p>\n
Drama in the ninth inning followed the previous pattern \u2014 Burns struck out the first two batters before losing his command, issuing a four-pitch walk, a five-pitch walk, and a seven-pitch walk to load the bases because the Auburn hitters weren\u2019t convinced that Burns could dominate the strike zone, and for good reason.<\/p>\n
With Friday\u2019s hero at the plate, center fielder Bristol Carter, Burns was able to make the crucial pitch, inducing a fielder\u2019s choice to redshirt senior third baseman Temo Becerra to secure the hard-fought victory.<\/p>\n
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Texas was in a position to win the game because Harrison turned in a typically-strong performance in allowing two runs over 5.2 innings, striking out six and working around four hits and three walks.<\/p>\n
Aside from the questionable bullpen support, the game-changing efforts for the Longhorns came at the plate, where freshman designated hitter Maddox Monsour opened the scoring in the second inning with a a two-out, two-run single to right center to take advantage of an error by the Auburn shortstop, slashing a 1-2 breaking ball on the outside corner into the opposite field.<\/p>\n
The game-changing inning for the Longhorns came in the fourth when junior center fielder Aiden Robbins led off with his third home run of the series, a 417-foot tank to deep center at 109 miles per hour off the bat by crushing a first-pitch fastball at 89 miles per hour up and out over the plate.<\/p>\n
After redshirt senior third baseman Temo Becerra was thrown out trying to stretch a double into a triple, Texas mounted a two-out rally when two walks led to the first career home run by senior right fielder Jayden Duplantier on a full-count pitch, turning on a breaking ball and sending it 381 feet over the 37-foot well in left field at Plainsman Park, unquestionably the best swing of Duplantier\u2019s baseball career.<\/p>\n
In the sixth inning, a double by junior catcher Carson Tinney scored Monsour after a leadoff single for the final run scored by the Longhorns.<\/p>\n
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Texas goes for the series victory on Sunday at 2 p.m. Central on SEC Network+ with sophomore left-hander Dylan Volantis taking the mount.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a second straight late-inning Friday meltdown in SEC play, the No. 2 Texas Longhorns needed to find…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":215159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[83831,2746,2143,84124,70591,84121,84122,84123,27,67041,29,537,28,84118],"class_list":["post-215158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-auburn-baseball","tag-auburn-tigers","tag-central-texas","tag-duplantier","tag-luke-harrison","tag-plainsman-park","tag-redshirt-senior","tag-sixth-inning","tag-texas","tag-texas-baseball","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-longhorns","tag-texas-news","tag-thomas-burns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}