Nashville is not an easy place to win baseball games, and No. 4 Texas made sure everybody knew it by the time they boarded the bus home. The Longhorns took two of three from Vanderbilt at Hawkins Field over the weekend, capping the series with a gritty 4-3 extra-inning victory on Sunday to improve to 32-9 overall and 13-7 in Southeastern Conference play.
Friday Night Fireworks: Texas 11, Vanderbilt 4
Texas wasted no time establishing its identity in the series opener. The game was a quiet, low-scoring affair through the first couple of frames until Aiden Robbins changed the tone in the third inning with a solo home run that barely cleared the left-field wall. That was all Texas needed to get rolling. Robbins went back-to-back with another homer in the fourth, and by the fifth inning, the Longhorns had broken the game open with a five-run explosion that buried Vanderbilt starter Connor Fennell, who surrendered nine runs on 12 hits over five innings pitched.
Adrian Rodriguez punctuated the offensive outburst with a two-run shot in the sixth, one of four Longhorn home runs on the night, shouting “I’m back!” as he rounded the bases. Dylan Volantis was the story on the mound, delivering six dominant innings, allowing just one earned run on four hits while striking out 11 batters. Sam Cozart polished things off with two scoreless innings, and Texas walked away with an emphatic 11-4 statement win to open the series.
Saturday Stumble: Vanderbilt 6, Texas 0
If Game 1 was Texas at its best, Game 2 was Vanderbilt at theirs. In what may have been their finest performance of the entire season, the Commodores flipped the script completely, shutting out the Longhorns 6-0 and marking the first shutout loss Texas had suffered all year. Vanderbilt struck in the very first inning when Brodie Johnston lined a run-scoring triple, and Braden Holcomb followed with a two-run homer to quickly establish a 3-0 lead that never felt threatened.
Aiden Stillman set the tone from the mound with 3.2 scoreless innings, and Luke Guth and Tyler Baird kept Texas off the scoreboard the rest of the way. The Vanderbilt pitching staff combined for 14 strikeouts while holding the Longhorn lineup to just five hits all afternoon. Texas starter Ruger Riojas never found his footing, exiting after three innings having allowed five runs on eight hits, leaving his club in a hole it simply couldn’t dig out of.
Sunday Survival: Texas 4, Vanderbilt 3 (10 innings)
Sunday’s rubber match turned out to be everything a college baseball game should be.
Vanderbilt punched first again. Braden Holcomb continued his strong weekend with a two-run double in the third inning to give the Commodores a 2-0 edge. But Texas answered in the fourth when Adrian Rodriguez laced an RBI double, and Ethan Mendoza followed with a clutch single to knot things at 2-2. From there, both teams dug in.
The game stayed deadlocked until the eighth, when Mendoza delivered again, a sacrifice fly that gave Texas a 3-2 lead. Vanderbilt refused to go quietly. Tim Corbin called a hit-and-run play, and Rustan Rigdon executed perfectly, slapping a double down the line that scored Cade Sears all the way from first to tie it at 3-3 in the bottom half of the inning.
Extra innings brought drama, and ultimately, Vanderbilt’s undoing. Tyler Baird opened the 10th by plunking Carson Tinney and walking Anthony Pack Jr. With Jacob Faulkner called in from the bullpen, the Commodores seemed poised to escape, until Faulkner hit Callum Early to load the bases and then walked Temo Becerra on four pitches, forcing in the go-ahead run without Texas recording a single hit in the inning. Despite seven walks and four hit batters issued by Vanderbilt pitching over the course of the game, the Longhorns never needed a clutch knock. They simply let the Commodores beat themselves.
Sam Cozart then delivered when it mattered most. After a balk put runners on second and third with one out in the bottom of the 10th, Cozart bore down and struck out the final two Commodore batters, fanning Korbin Reynolds and Will Hampton back-to-back, to seal the 4-3 win and the series. Cozart finished with three innings of work, five strikeouts, and his sixth win of the season to go along with one of the gutsiest closing performances of the year.
With the series secured, Texas has now claimed their seventh SEC series win, which is tied for the best in the conference. The weekend showed both the ceiling and floor of this Longhorn ball club. When Dylan Volantis is dominating lineups and Sam Cozart is slamming the door, this team looks capable of making a deep postseason run. The offensive inconsistency, however, remains an area that will need improvement when the stakes get higher in June. Texas left Nashville battered but resilient, and that alone speaks volumes about what this group is made of.
The Longhorns return home Tuesday to host Sam Houston at UFCU Disch-Falk Field with first pitch set for 6:30 p.m.
