HOUSTON – Visiting Rice jumped out to a lead with a four-run first inning but HCU fought back to tie things up in the seventh but the Owls came back and pulled away for a 10-7 win on Wednesday evening at Husky Field.
Rice (15-11) opened the game with three-straight singles to push across the first run and put runners on first and second. After a pair of lineouts, two more singles pushed across three more runs to put the Huskies (11-14) in a four-run hole. In the bottom of the first,
Katcher Halligan drew a two-out walk, advanced on a wild pitch and then scored on a single up the middle brought Halligan around to score and put HCU on the board.
The game moved along at a fast clip for the next six innings as the two teams traded zeroes. The scoreless stretch ended in the bottom of the seventh with Halligan again playing an important role. The senior led off with a double to right center and two batters later a single from
Jack Walker put runners on the corners with one out.
Levi Castilleja came up with a sacrifice fly to center to score Halligan and cut the HCU deficit down to just two. The next batter,
Preston Curtis, got a hold of a 3-2 offering and sent it 365 feet over the fence to left to even the score at 4-4.
Rice answered quickly in the top half of the eighth with leadoff hitter Cole Green hitting a solo home run off the left field foul pole to put the Owls back ahead. The visitors kept going, though, and finished the inning with five runs on five hits to put the Huskies in a 9-4 hole. Rice then added another in the top of the ninth, making it 10-4.
Things got interesting in the bottom of the ninth with a walk and a hit batter to start the inning. Castilleja followed with an infield single to load the bases with nobody out. Following a pitching change mid at bat, Curtis and
Nico DeFazio drew consecutive walks to bring the tying run to the plate with nobody out. Following a shallow fly out, a wild pitch allowed the runners to advance with Castilleja scoring and bringing the score to 10-7. A slow roller in the infield off the bat of
Jeremy Rader ended up as a fielder's choice as Curtis got stuck between third and home and was chased down and tagged trying to get to the plate for out number two. Pinch hitter
Anthony Avalos hit one well to center that was caught to end the game.
Curtis finished the night with three RBI, going 1-for-3 at the plate with the home run and a walk. Halligan and Walker both went 1-for-3 and scored twice.
The Huskies scored their seven runs on six hits with zero errors while leaving four runners on base while the Owls finished the night with 14 hits and nine runners left on.
The Huskies jump back into Southland Conference play this weekend with a three-game set in Nacogdoches, Texas against the Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks from Friday through Sunday, Mar. 27-29.
