UTSA baseball sweeps Rice

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A historic season for the Roadrunner baseball team comes down to the final home series this weekend. UTSA will host Dallas Baptist with first place on the line in the Conference USA.

The Roadrunners and Patriots have spent the season trading first place between themselves. UTSA is half a game back against Dallas Baptist entering this weekend. More on that series below but first a look back at this past weekend that saw UTSA sweep Rice in three straight games that they were trailing in at home.

UTSA entered the weekend series against Rice coming off their worst home loss in several years after losing 18-2 to Sam Houston last Tuesday night. Rice entered the series having lost five games in a row, including three in a row against Dallas Baptist that the Owls had led before losing.

It would be deja vu all over again for the Owls as they held leads in all three games against UTSA before losing. On Friday night Rice scored three runs in the top of the first inning and a run in the second to go up 4-0.

UTSA responded with a run scored by Caleb Hill on a Matt King single in the bottom of the second. King later scored on a fielders choice and UTSA cut the deficit to 4-2 going into the third. The Roadrunners tied the score in the bottom of the third with two runs.

Rice retook the lead with three runs in the top of the fifth. The Owls lead lasted until the bottom of the seventh when UTSA scored four runs to go up 8-7. UTSA added another run in the bottom of the eighth to give the game its final margin of 9-7.

On Saturday the Owls jumped on UTSA early again with two home runs in the top of the first inning and a three run top of the second. It was in the top of the second, with Rice up 5-0, that the game went into a two hour weather delay.

When play resumed UTSA limited Rice to three runs the rest of the game, one in the third and two in the eighth. The Roadrunners got their first run in the bottom of the second and got to within one run of Rice at 6-5 with a four run fourth inning. UTSA took the lead with three runs in the bottom of the sixth to go up 8-6. The Roadrunners went up 9-6 in the seventh but Rice got within one run after scoring two in the top of the eighth. UTSA scored its final run in the bottom of the eighth and held on for the 10-8 win.

As they had in the first two games Rice were first on the board on Sunday with a run in the second inning. UTSA tied the game at 1-1 in the bottom of the second and went up 5-1 with four runs in the third. Rice retook the lead, 6-5, with a five-run fourth inning. The Owls lead stood for two innings before UTSA put six runs across in the bottom of the sixth inning for an 11-6 lead. UTSA's defense was able to make that score hold up and the Roadrunners picked up their 36th win of the season overall and 19th win in conference play.

The sweep over Rice helped UTSA keep its place in the national top 25 rankings and set up a historic series this weekend against number 18 Dallas Baptist. Two ranked teams will play against each other for the first time in the history of Roadrunner Field.

It is just more of the history the Roadrunners have made this season with seven regular season games to play as well as the conference tournament later this month. The 36 wins this season are the fourth most wins in a season by a Roadrunner baseball team.

UTSA could match the school record of 39 set in 1994 and 2008 with a sweep of Dallas Baptist. Though it's more likely that UTSA might match that record next week either in a midweek game at Abilene Christian or the final series of the regular season at Louisiana Tech.

UTSA baseball is also nine wins away from reaching the milestone of 900 wins as a program. Roadrunner Head Coach Pat Hallmark picked up wins 104, 105 and 106 at the school in the sweep of Rice. Hallmark is still fifth on the UTSA coaching wins list but he is only five wins from surpassing the total of Jimmy Shankle and eight wins away from moving past Mickey Lashley into third.

If UTSA can win the series against Dallas Baptist they would hold the head-to-head tiebreaker, which based on UTSA's third game at Charlotte being cancelled might not come into play as the half game that has separated the Roadrunners and the Patriots would keep the two from finishing with the same record.

There are quite a bit of similarities between the two. Both came out of last weekend with overall records of 36-12. Dallas Baptist did improve its overall record to 37-12 with a 12-5 win over Central Arkansas on Tuesday afternoon.

Dallas Baptist has scored 397 runs this season and given up 233 runs this season. UTSA has scored 372 runs and given up 246. DBU as a team has a .293 team batting average compared to UTSA's .312. UTSA's opponents have a team average of .271. The Roadrunner's pitching staff has a cumulative ERA of 4.39. The Patriots opponents have a team average of .247 against a pitching staff with an ERA of 4.26.

UTSA will enter its final home series of the season with a 25-5 record at Roadrunner Field. Dallas Baptist is 12-8 on the road this season.

This weekend will mark the first and only time the two schools meet in the regular season as members of Conference USA. UTSA and DBU have played 16 times before with the series split at 8-8.

The Roadrunners are 1-5 against Dallas Baptist at Roadrunner Field. 10 years ago UTSA and Dallas Baptist were both members of the Western Athletic Conference. UTSA beat Dallas Baptist 11-4 in the conference tournament championship on May 26, 2013. This weekend will be the first time UTSA and Dallas Baptist play against each other since February 25, 2014 when DBU won 6-5 in a 12 inning game at Roadrunner Field.

After the Dallas Baptist series, UTSA will play its final midweek game of the regular season when it travels to face Abilene Christian next Tuesday. UTSA has never traveled to Abilene Christian. The three previous games in the series have all been at Roadrunner Field with UTSA having a 2-1 record against the Wildcats.

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