After sweeping Friday's doubleheader at Nolan Ryan field on the campus of Texas A&M-Kingsville, the Incarnate Word baseball team dropped both games of Saturday's doubleheader at Whataburger Field in Corpus Christi, TX, splitting the four-game series against the Hoggies.
With the 8-5 and 6-4 victories, TAMU-Kingsville must wait for the Angelo State-Abilene Christian series to end on Sunday before finding out who gets first place in the Lone Star Conference, but another victory by the Rams will probably lock in the top spot for the 2012 regular season and the top seed in the LSC tournament.
For Incarnate Word (22-19 overall and 16-11 LSC), the worst the Cardinals can finish is in fourth place – and that depends on if West Texas A&M (28-16 overall, 15-11 LSC) can win the last two games of their series at Eastern New Mexico. WT lost the first game of Saturday's doubleheader to the Greyhounds (only the third LSC win of the year for ENMU), which made the final games of the season very interesting.
In game one, the Cardinals let TAMUK get an early lead of 6-1 that the team simply could not come back from, even with the team scoring four runs in the final two innings. Incarnate Word connected on eight hits in the seven-inning game (including a home run by Greg Barbaro), but surrendered 15 to the home team.
Marc Gomez took his first loss of the season, giving up six runs (only three earned) in five innings of work (he struck out four opponents).
In game two, UIW fell behind early, 2-1, before knotting things up for a brief moment… and then TAMUK added three more runs in the bottom of the third for a 5-2 lead.
The Cardinals came close to evening up the score again in the 5th inning with a three-hit, two-run inning – with all the offense happening after TAMUK had gotten two outs on the scoreboard. But, after an RBI-double by Adam Pena that scored Thomas Rinn, the Cardinals grounded out and left the potential game-tying run stranded.
Kingsville would add an insurance run in the bottom of the 8th inning and UIW went 1-2-3 in the top of the 9th.
With the Cardinals guaranteed the third or fourth seed of the 2012 Lone Star Conference Baseball Championship, UIW needs only wait to find out what their final seeding is and which team they will face first out at Angelo State (the 2012 host).
The LSC championships are a 6-team tournament and runs May 5th-8th. Check out the championship's online headquarters by clicking this link.
