MU loses to Big 12 competitor in weekend series

Both teams were nationally ranked going into the weekend series.

By Catherine Crane

Published April 17, 2007

In one of its more important series of the season thus far, the MU baseball team dropped two of three to the No. 16 Texas A&M Aggies.

The first game of the series, set for Friday, was postponed to Saturday because of weather, and Saturday's game was made a doubleheader split.

Sophomore Aaron Crow started the game for the Tigers, pitching his first complete game and keeping the Tigers in the game until the ninth inning before falling to the Aggies 3-1. MU got out to an early lead, scoring a run in the second inning when junior Jacob Priday batted in freshman Trevor Coleman, who reached on a double.

"I can't control if we are going to score 10 runs one day or two, so I try not to worry about it," Crow said. "But at the same time, it does get frustrating not having so many wins. But I try not to worry about it."

Sophomore Rick Zagone started the second game for the Tigers, which proved their only victory of the series.

Despite having a six-run lead, it wasn't enough for Zagone to get the win. Zagone gave up six runs including several bloop hits.

"You can't control (bloop hits), but you'd like to get the out when you throw a pitch that they can't hit very well," Zagone said. "But they were just falling in today. They were just fisting them out there."

The Tigers' offense mounted a six-run third inning, but the Aggies were able to come back and tie the game at six in the seventh inning.

MU scored a run in the bottom of the ninth to win the game, 7-6, when Priday batted in sophomore Ryan Lollis on an error by the shortstop.

Freshman Greg Folgia started the final game of the series, recording the loss and moving his record to 2-3. Folgia gave up four runs on five hits, including two back-to-back home runs in the second innings. Folgia pitched 4.1 innings for the Tigers without any run support from MU's offense.

The Tigers didn't score any runs until the seventh and eighth innings. MU recorded a run in each, but it wasn't enough as A&M beat MU 5-2 to win the series.

MU had several chances to score runs but didn't cash in on those opportunities.

MU coach Tim Jamieson said the problem lies in the confidence of the batters, which was the main problem in Sunday's loss.

"There are some guys that are (confident), and there are some guys that aren't, and the guys that came up when we needed hits are not confident," Jamieson said. "That's the cruelty of the game sometimes. We had plenty of opportunities to score runs. They hit four or five guys, (and) they walked a bunch of guys. We did a good job setting up innings, but we didn't do a good job after that."