The Collegian  ONLINE
         April 28, 2008

Diego Lerma/Collegian

Outfielder Ryan MacDonald swings during practice Thursday at Scorpion Field. UTB/TSC will host the Red River Athletic Conference Tournament Tuesday through Saturday.

After a long, bumpy road, the UTB/TSC Baseball Team will compete this week in the Red River Athletic Conference tournament that it worked hard to get into.

Competition begins Tuesday at Scorpion Field. The schedule was not available at press time.

 “We’re where we want to be,” Head Coach Joel Barta said about the tournament. “The way we build our schedule was so we could make postseason, so we feel extremely good about our chances [in the tournament].”

On April 19 and 20, the Scorpions played their last three-game series of the season against the Houston Baptist University Huskies, an NCAA Division I team, and won two of three games.

In Game 1, the Huskies gained a 4-0 lead in the third and fourth inning. The Scorpions, scoreless in four innings, scored four runs the fifth and two runs in the sixth and seventh innings, taking the lead and the win 8-4.

Brian Dombeck had two runs for the Scorpions and pitcher Julian Moya allowed two runs and eight hits.  The Scorpions had eight hits and the Huskies had nine.

In Game 2, both teams remained scoreless until the Huskies scored a run in the fifth inning.  In the sixth inning, both teams scored a run, but the Huskies had the 2-1 lead. In the seventh inning, the Scorpions scored two runs, taking a 3-2 lead. Both teams scored two runs in the eighth inning, but the Scorpions still maintained the lead at 5-4. In the last inning of the game, the Huskies scored two runs, taking the 6-5 win over the Scorpions. Pitcher Tony Lerma allowed three earned runs, six hits and eight strikes and infielder Schaune Collins hit a home run.

In the final game of the series, the Huskies had a 6-1 lead over the Scorpions by the fourth inning. In the fifth inning, the Scorpions retaliated and scored nine runs, taking a 10-6 lead. The Scorpions maintained that lead throughout the rest of the game, scoring one more run in the sixth while the Huskies only scored three more runs in the eighth inning. The Scorpions won 11-9.

Tyler O’Neal and Scott Price scored two runs each for the Scorpions; and for the Huskies, Ryan Majerwski and Josh Jackson scored two runs each.

“In one of the games … we had something going, but we basically didn’t finish,” Barta said about the Houston Baptist games. “We came back in both games and we did a pretty good job being resilient. And in the other game, we got a couple of hits late and closing it up.”