College baseball rarely produces drama quite like Tuesday night at UFCU Disch-Falk Field, where Carson Tinney stepped to the plate with two outs, the game on the line, and delivered the kind of moment that can carry a team through anything.
Tinney’s 463-foot, two-run walk-off homer, his second of the night, gave No. 4 Texas a heart-stopping 15-14 victory over Sam Houston, completing the Longhorns’ largest comeback win in four years and sending a raucous home crowd into pandemonium.
It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t clean. But it was unforgettable.
Texas (33-9) dug itself three separate holes throughout the evening, none deeper than a six-run deficit that would have buried a lesser team. The Bearkats (20-25) had every reason to feel comfortable, until the Longhorns decided they didn’t want to go home.
A Mountain to Climb
Sam Houston wasted little time establishing control. Wes Baker’s third-inning grand slam headlined an 8-2 Bearkat surge that had the visitors firmly in command. Texas looked lost, and the scoreboard wasn’t shy about saying so.
Then the fifth and sixth innings happened.
The Longhorns erupted for eight unanswered runs over those two frames, a prolonged burst of offense that rewired the entire complexion of the game. Casey Borba’s three-run shot ignited the rally, Aiden Robbins followed with a towering 413-foot solo blast to knot the score, and Ethan Mendoza’s clutch two-RBI double pushed Texas in front, 11-9. Robbins’ 18th home run of the season pulled him even with Scott Bryant (1989), Max Belyeu and Jalin Flores (both 2024) for eighth-most in a single season in program history, a remarkable milestone buried inside an already chaotic evening.
Never Easy
Momentum in this game had the shelf life of a mayfly. No sooner had Texas grabbed the lead than Baker, yes, the same Baker who hurt them earlier, answered with a go-ahead three-run homer in the seventh, swinging control back to Sam Houston for the fourth time in five lead changes.
The Longhorns clawed back to 12-12 in the eighth on a Temo Becerra RBI single that plated Anthony Pack Jr., Becerra’s third hit of the night and perhaps the most quietly important one. But the Bearkats weren’t finished. Kirby Orth’s two-run shot in the top of the ninth pushed Sam Houston back ahead, 14-12, and suddenly Texas was staring down three outs to save its perfect midweek record.
The Moment
Ashton Larson opened the bottom of the ninth by getting hit by a pitch, and pinch runner Jayden Duplantier immediately stole second to put the tying run in scoring position. Noah Kendrick struck out the next batter to push the odds further toward Sam Houston, but Robbins had other ideas, lining an RBI single to cut the deficit to one.
That brought up Tinney.
Two pitches later, the conversation was over.
The ball left the bat with authority, climbing high into the Texas night before landing 463 feet from home plate. Tinney’s fourth Longhorn home run of the evening — and the exclamation point on the team’s largest comeback since a 12-8 win over Oklahoma on April 3, 2022, sent the dugout spilling onto the field.
The marathon lasted three hours and 58 minutes and required 14 pitchers. Left-hander Kade Bing (1-1) earned the win in relief.
Texas now turns its attention to a marquee weekend series, hosting No. 10 Mississippi State beginning Friday at 6:30 p.m. at UFCU Disch-Falk Field.
