Rice Baseball faces elimination after taking an eighth inning lead against UTSA but failing to hold on, falling to the Roadrunners for the fourth time in the past six days
For Rice baseball, things looked rather dire rather quickly in the opening game of the AAC Tournament against UTSA. After the Owls failed to score in the opening half inning, staff ace Davion Hickson gave up a solo home run and allowed two runners into scoring position, an inauspicious start against a team that had scored 33 runs in three games against the Owls this past weekend.
Hickson would rebound, though, recording a strikeout to escape the jam. From there, Hickson was locked in, retiring 14 batters in a row before UTSA got their next hit of the game in the bottom of the sixth inning. By that time, the Rice bats had done enough to give the team a chance.
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A perfectly executed squeeze bunt by Colin Robson tied the game in the fifth. An inning later, Paul Smith roped a two-out single just past a diving second baseman to give Rice their first lead of the afternoon.
Staked to a one-run lead, Hickson worked through traffic but kept compiling outs. Hickson navigated between a pair of singles in the sixth and a one-out double in the seventh. A strikeout started the eighth, but a hit batter and a double put runners on the corners with one out in a pivotal moment.
Head coach Davide Pierce called a meeting on the mound to the set the defense and talk strategy. There was no intention of pulling Hickson from that game at the time with the skipper opting to trust his best arm. This time, Hickson couldn’t escape. A double to the gap in right center plated two, giving UTSA the lead and knocking Hickson from the game.
“I thought he pitched outstanding,” Pierce said of Hickson after the game. “Really did a great job staying ahead in counts. He didn’t walk anyone. He hit one guy.”
That guy would come around to score, souring what will likely be Hickson’s final collegiate outing. After he was lifted, Garrett Stratton allowed another run to score, sending Rice to the ninth inning facing a two-run deficit from which they would not recover. UTSA held on to win the opening game 4-2.
Even when accounting for that final at-bat, Hickson was rock solid, striking out seven through 7.1 innings of work and giving his team a chance. It was always going to be a tough ask to expect two runs on two hits to be enough against the conference’s top team.
With the loss, Rice heads to an elimination game against Florida Atlantic tomorrow. Pierce will take some time with his staff this afternoon to gameplan his pitching approach, but he knows the level of urgency they’ll have to operate with the next time they take the diamond.
“You can’t afford to extend a guy if we’re living on the edge. I’d like to see someone go out there and really pitch like Davion did today,” he said. “No matter what, we just gotta have everybody ready.”
Up Next: Wed, May 21 at 1:00 pm CT vs Florida Atlantic (Elimination Game)
