<\/p>\n
Texas and Jim Schlossnagle lost to Texas A&M in the coach’s return to College Station.<\/p>\n
Icon Sportswire\/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images<\/p>\n
COLLEGE STATION \u2014 A rare implosion by the Texas bullpen dealt the No. 2 ranked Longhorns an 9-8 loss before a packed house at Blue Bell Park Friday night as well as a chance to forge a tie for first place in the SEC.<\/p>\n
Haiden Leffew and Brett Crossland suffered a meltdown in the sixth and seventh innings with five walks and a hit batter to forfeit a 6-4 Longhorn lead.<\/p>\n
Texas\u2019 Aiden Robbins and Anthony Pack Jr. each hit solo home runs in the ninth to draw to within a run, but Temo Becerra popped up with no one on base for the final out of the game.<\/p>\n
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An unearned run in the Aggies\u2019 two-run eighth on a throwing error by third baseman Casey Borba proved to the be the ultimate difference. Borba also struck out four times.<\/p>\n
Texas A&M, whose dangerous lineup was called \u201cOmaha-caliber\u201d by Texas coach Jim Schlossnagle, scored runs in six consecutive innings to pull off the upset.<\/p>\n
The 18th-ranked Aggies (26-7) won for the ninth time in 10 games to improve to 8-5 in the conference. Texas falls to 27-6. The two teams play Game Two at 2 p.m. Saturday with the finale at 1 p.m. Sunday.<\/p>\n
Carson Tinney and Robbins each hit a two-run home run to give Texas that two-run advantage and Robbins added that solo shot in the ninth, but the visitors couldn\u2019t take advantage of SEC frontrunner Georgia\u2019s loss to Florida and fell to 9-4 in the league race, a game behind the Bulldogs.<\/p>\n
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All four of Texas\u2019 losses have come in Friday SEC openers although the Longhorns have rallied to win the three other league series and also swept Oklahoma this season.<\/p>\n
The Aggies had just seven hits but four were for extra bases. They also scored three times without a hit in the sixth inning on two bases-loaded walks and a sacrifice fly by Gavin Grahovac to take the lead for good.<\/p>\n
The hosts scored another in the seventh on a routine single but also a walk and a hit batter and a sacrifice fly by Jorian Wilson and one in the eighth on Caden Sorrell\u2019s single, stolen base and a throwing error by Borba.<\/p>\n
In a renewal of the series between these two heated rivals for the first time since 1992, a crowd of 7,664 house jeered former Aggies and current Longhorn head coach Jim Schlossnagle\u2019s every move from the pre-game warmups to his numerous pitching changes.<\/p>\n
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Texas looked to be in position to win when both Tinney and Robbins went yard for their 12th homer of the year, but the Longhorn relievers just didn\u2019t have any command.<\/p>\n
This was a back-and-forth game in which the lead changed hands four times and neither team ever taking more than a two-run advantage.<\/p>\n
Neither starting pitcher was particularly sharp. Texas\u2019 Ruger Riojas had troubles for the second straight start and now has allowed 13 hits and 10 earned runs in his last two outings against A&M and South Carolina. The senior right-hander lasted just three innings versus the Gamecocks and managed to go five on Friday, getting roughed up for five hits and four earned runs.<\/p>\n
Reliever Ethan Darden got credit for the win, and freshman Clayton Freshcorn earned his seventh save after striking out four in three innings.<\/p>\n
The A&M students certainly made their presence known early, razzing Schlossnagle and the Longhorns during their batting practice.<\/p>\n
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One student yelled at the head coach as he left the field during pregame warmups and screamed, \u201cWelcome to hell, Jim.\u201d<\/p>\n
Texas scored first on Anthony Pack Jr.\u2019s bases-loaded sacrifice fly in the top of the third inning, but A&M responded with two in the bottom on Grahovac\u2019s RBI double after Longhorn right fielder Jayden Duplantier lost track of a fly ball that fell in for a leadoff triple and Caden Sorrell\u2019s run-scoring groundout.<\/p>\n
The Longhorns knotted the game at 2-2 in the fourth when 9-hole hitter Josh Livingston perfectly lined a double down the first-base line and into the right field corner to score Duplantier from first.<\/p>\n
But the Aggies untied it in their next at-bat when Nico Partida crushed a Riojas pitch with a line drive that cleared the left-field wall and went 372 feet for his 10th home run of the year.<\/p>\n
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A&M starter Shane Sdao then plunked Pack with a pitch and was pulled after striking out six in four-plus innings.<\/p>\n
Grahovac scored the game-tying run in the fifth with a one-out triple into the right-field corner and came home on Sorrell\u2019s second RBI groundout of the night.<\/p>\n
Then came the pivotal sixth and seventh innings when Leffew and Crossland couldn\u2019t find the plate.<\/p>\n
Leffew, the lefty transfer from Wake Forest, walked three after issuing just five passes all season in nine appearances totaling 11\u2153 innings and managed to retire just one batter. The freshman Crossland was just as ineffective, walking two and hitting a batter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas and Jim Schlossnagle lost to Texas A&M in the coach’s return to College Station. Icon Sportswire\/Icon Sportswire…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":244653,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-244652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244652","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=244652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}