Virtuous Ags victorious as patience pays dividends in 11-inning affair

Game #59: #1 Texas A&M 4, #3 Texas 2 (11 innings)
Records: Texas A&M (46-13, 19-11), Texas (36-23, 20-10)
WP: Evan Aschenbeck (6-1)
LP: Andre Duplantier II (2-2)
Box Score

If patience is a virtue, then in Saturday's final minutes, the Aggies were much more than victorious.

They were virtuous.

Indeed, an 11-inning thriller took all the guts, nerves and fingernail biting that 7,630 at Blue Bell Park could withstand as No. 3 national seed Texas A&M outlasted arch-rival Texas, 4-2.

"Just an incredible ballgame," said A&M head coach Jim Schlossnagle. "I thought both teams played great, and I hope whoever's in charge of the attendance numbers can do my taxes because 7,600 is a joke."

In surviving a nearly four-hour rivalry showdown, the Aggies advance to Sunday night's Bryan-College Station Regional Final.

They'll face the victor of Texas and Louisiana at 7 p.m. CT.

On Saturday, the path to 2-0 in the early stages of the NCAA Tournament required a lot of perseverance.

"We battled," Schlossnagle said. "So many little things in baseball to help you win a close ballgame like that."

A&M finished just 1-for-13 with men in scoring position.

The "one" was as improbable as possible.

Tied 2-2 with two outs and the bases full of Aggies in the top of the 11th, Ted Burton rolled a nubber up the third-base line.

It hit the bag to allow Kaeden Kent to score.

"It played like a big-league park today, that's for sure, but it went both ways," Burton said. "Just tried to stick to the game plan. We had a lot of guys hit balls hard at people, and our pitchers did their job. When it came our time, we loaded the bases up, and I just tried to do my part to help the team out."

Three pitches later, Jace LaViolette crossed home on a Chase Lummus wild pitch.

Two runs were all Evan Aschenbeck needed.

Relieving Ryan Prager in the seventh, the Brenham native entered with A&M trailing 2-1.

A pair of Jalin Flores eighth-inning errors gifted A&M the tying run, and Aschenbeck lived up to his bell-cow status to hurl 4.2 innings of no-hit ball.

"I just try to be myself," he explained. "It doesn't matter what the outing is going to be like because you don't know what the next pitch holds, so you just have to worry about where your feet are and where your mind is at that point."

His heroic effort was another in a ballgame that featured multiple.

Starters Prager and Lebarron Johnson Jr. dueled early.

The Aggie ace surrendered just two runs — both on solo homers to Jared Thomas and Kimble Schuessler in the first and sixth, respectively — in 6.1 innings.

Prager fanned seven, including an immaculate fourth.

"Pitching and the game of baseball isn't a game of perfect. It's a game of compete," Prager said of his outing. "I thought that summed up tonight.

"There's four walks in there that don't make me happy that will probably eat at me a little bit, but that'll go away. This time of year especially, the most important part is helping the team win. That's what I'll look back on and think that's what made this outing so good."

Kelii Horvath, TexAgs

Caden Sorrell’s fifth-inning home run was the ninth of his freshman campaign. 

In his five frames, the lone blemish on Johnson's line was Caden Sorrell's opposite-field blast in the fifth.

He punched out eight Aggies.

Even Texas' first reliever — righty Gage Boehm — held the Aggies in check across four innings, coughing up the eighth-inning unearned run.

"I thought that Lebarron Johnson and Gage Boehm were awesome," Schlossnagle said. "Prager was outstanding, and Aschenbeck was great."

The pitching dominated. The offenses were dominated.

The storied rivals combined for just nine hits. There were 23 total strikeouts and 20 men left on base.

A&M took the lion's share of those LOBsters, stranding 14.

Chance after chance went for naught.

Numerous hard-hit flyballs fell harmlessly into gloves on the warning track.

"We got a lot pretty good swings on them, Teddy in particular," Schlossnagle said. "It's crazy how dumb baseball is. The guy destroys two balls to center field, and the one that gives us the lead is the swinging bunt that hits the base."

And in the end, the latest thrilling chapter in a historic matchup turned on a slow roller.

For Aggies everywhere, it was well worth the wait.