Texas Wesleyan baseball drops game one of NAIA tourney to Houston Baptist

by PegNews wire

The second seeded Texas Wesleyan University baseball team (39-9) committed five errors as Houston Baptist University (36-17) ran away with a 13-1 win in the first round of the NAIA Region VI Tournament.

Ben Kliever went 1-for-1 for the Rams on Tuesday.

Texas Wesleyan defeated Houston Baptist twice on their way to the Red River Athletic Conference Championship last week. However, everything went the Huskies way on Tuesday.

Houston Baptist struck early with three runs on four hits, including RBI doubles from Michael Crabtree and Andrew Taccolini, in the first. Two Texas Wesleyan errors led to four more runs making it 7-0 in the top of the third.

In the fourth, Ryan Majewski led off with a double and later scored on a single from Greg Gossett. The Huskies capitalized on another Texas Wesleyan error to score a second run in the frame and bring the score to 9-0.

Meanwhile, Matthew Headley did not allow the Rams a hit until Brandon Frazier led off the bottom of the fourth with a single to left.

The Rams’ fifth error of the day cost them two more runs in the fifth.

Texas Wesleyan finally got on the board in the sixth. Brandon Frazier reached on a fielder’s choice, advanced to third on a single from Ryan Ragsdale, and scored on a single from Billie Hicks.

The Huskies added a run with an RBI single from Chad Hebert in the seventh.

Headley (11-3) allowed one run on five hits while striking out six in six innings of work. Jesse Wright (3-1) suffered his first loss of the season after allowing seven runs, three earned, on seven hits in three innings pitched.

The Rams will move on to play Wiley College at 9:00 a.m. on Wednesday in Houston. The Wildcats lost the tournament’s opening game 11-0 to top-seeded Oklahoma City University.

Source: Texas Wesleyan