The Texas A&M baseball team will play the Houston Cougars at 5 p.m. Tuesday at Blue Bell Park in its final game before opening Southeastern Conference play this weekend at eighth-ranked LSU.
The Aggies (10-5) are coming off a series win against Santa Clara, while the Cougars (10-6) lost two of three at Louisiana-Lafayette. UH doesn’t start American Athletic Conference play until next month.
A&M’s starting pitcher will be freshman right-hander Khristian Curtis (2-0, 0.68 ERA) while UH will counter with junior left-hander Kyle LaCalameto (1-0, 4.38 ERA).
A&M leads the series 115-57-1, including last year’s 9-4 victory in Houston.
Bearkats start strong. Sam Houston (10-5) opened Western Athletic Conference play by sweeping Tarleton. The Bearkats had the WAC’s hitter of the week in Carlos Contreras and the pitcher of the week in Cole Wesneski. Contreras went 8 for 10 with three walks and eight runs batted in. Wesneski struck out 10 in Friday’s 12-4 victory.
People are also reading…
Sam Houston will be home to Baylor on Tuesday night and travel to Rice on Wednesday night.
Scrambled rankings. Ole Miss (13-2) moved up two spots to take over the top spot by in the USA Today coaches poll. Texas (13-4), which has lost four of six, slipped to second with Vanderbilt (13-2) third. Ole Miss also is first by D1Baseball.com with Texas second and Arkansas (11-3) third. Vandy is No. 1 by the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association with Ole Miss second and UT third.
Swinging Susac. Daniel Susac became the first Arizona player in 24 years to hit two home runs in an inning. He was part of a nine-run first in the Wildcats’ 13-5, series-clinching win over California. Susac, an All-American last season, is batting .416 with three homers, 11 doubles and 23 RBIs in 16 games.
Hall ball. Seton Hall pulled one of the surprises of the weekend with its 6-4 win at Florida on Sunday, the Pirates’ first victory after 12 losses to start the season. The Pirates hadn’t beaten a Power Five team since a 10-2 win over Illinois on Feb. 15, 2020.
A long game. Charlotte played its longest game in terms of time elapsed in its 9-7, 12-inning loss to Appalachian State on Sunday. The game lasted 5 hours, 41 minutes.
The 49ers thought they had it won in the ninth on a play at the plate, but the umpire called obstruction on catcher Kaden Hopson and the tying run counted. Andrew Greckel drove in the go-ahead run for App State in the 12th.
Mercer shows no mercy. Mercer outscored Saint Peter’s 54-4 in a three-game sweep and is off to the best start in program history at 15-1.
The Bears from the Southern Conference own wins over Florida State and Georgia Tech and will face a big challenge this week when they travel to South Florida, which made it to super regionals last season.
Trojans stepping high. Southern California had its first series win at UCLA since 2016, part of an 11-3 start, the Trojans best since starting 12-0 in ‘15.
UCLA entered the Pac-12 opening series ranked as high as No. 15 and had beaten then-No. 1 Texas a week earlier in Houston. The Trojans won 7-4 Friday and bounced back from a 2-1 loss Saturday to win 6-3 on Sunday. They made their first appearance of the season in the national rankings at No. 25 by Baseball America and Collegiate Baseball newspaper.
USC, which has won an NCAA-best 12 national championships but none since 1998, has struggled to regain its traction the past two decades.
The Trojans haven’t been back to the College World Series since 2001 or won a conference title since 2002. Not counting the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, they haven’t had a winning record since 2015, which also was the last time they’ve appeared in the NCAA Tournament.
They were picked eighth in the Pac-12 preseason poll.