Photo courtesy of UMHB Athletics
MARSHALL, Texas — In the blink of an eye, everything seemed to shift in LeTourneau’s favor on Thursday afternoon.
In an ASC Tournament quarterfinal between the second-seeded Yellowjackets and No. 3 UMHB, the breaks went LeTourneau’s way from the start. Hard-hit groundballs went for doubles down the line or deep into the 5-6 hole at shortstop for infield singles. Flyballs carried over the outfield wall at ETBU’s Woods Field for homers. And pitches that normally produced swinging strikes instead hung over the plate for RBIs. The same LeTourneau lineup that scored 36 runs in four games against UMHB five weeks prior picked up where they left off against the Crusader pitching staff. And they did so with the postseason spotlight shining bright.
19 hits, four of which were homers, produced 19 runs off the red-hot Yellowjacket bats, and the result was as one might anticipate when those stats are noted: LETU, 19, UMHB, 9.
UMHB will now play with its season on the line on Friday morning, facing No. 4 seed Hardin-Simmons in an 11 a.m. elimination matchup.
The first 11 of LETU’s runs came before The Cru recorded even two outs in the opening frame. A half-inning after UMHB took a 2-0 advantage on Shane Melick’s two-run homer over the short porch in left field, LETU put up the kind of inning an observer had to see to believe. 11 runs scored in the span of only one out being recorded, and came as the result of eight hits, a pair of two-run homers, three walks, and a fielding error. UMHB starter Kolby McBee, the ASC’s leader in ERA, ended his day with five earned runs allowed in nine batters faced. Top reliever Mason Semmelmann struggled against LETU’s bats as well, getting the final two outs to send UMHB into the second inning, but with three earned runs on three hits coming beforehand.
To describe it as uncharacteristic would be an understatement. LETU erased UMHB’s two-run advantage by the second batter, when Dane Jones swatted a two-run homer of his own to the same spot that Melick did just minutes earlier. Five batters into the bottom of the first, LETU had its first lead, when Jack Kale lined a hard-hit single to right field, scoring runners from second and third. The outburst continued from there, up to the point when Xander Nabors, who had scored on Kale’s RBI base hit, connected on LETU’s second home run of the inning to go up 11-2.
Even facing a near-insurmountable deficit, UMHB went to work in the second, aiming at a comeback. Austin Birkhoff singled to lead off the inning, setting up Cameron Talburt’s sixth homer of the season that pulled UMHB within seven. The pitching proved solid as well, with Bryce Farlander posting four straight scoreless frames, surrendering just two hits in that stretch.
But LETU rallied in the sixth as Farlander faced the Yellowjacket lineup for the second time. An Austin Wiederhol grand slam pulled all the momentum back to LETU, and with one out, Kale’s second RBI single of the day scored Nabors from second, pushing the lead to 18-4.
It gave LETU its largest lead of the afternoon, and despite a five-run seventh for The Cru, UMHB couldn’t avoid the run-rule defeat. Brice Cagle led off the bottom of the inning with a single, advanced to second, then third on an error, and scored the run-rule-clincher on Wiederhol’s RBI base hit.
Notes from Woods Field
- UMHB has now scored at least nine runs in three of its last five games played away from Belton.
- Including Thursday, The Cru lineup has put up at least nine runs on five occasions against ASC opponents this season.
- LETU’s 19 runs are the most allowed by UMHB in a game this season, surpassing the 17 runs allowed in the loss at UT-Dallas on April 11. The Yellowjackets’ 19 hits are also the most in a single game by a Crusader opponent in 41 games thus far.
- Second baseman Alejandro Sanchez III went 2-for-4, extending his streak of consecutive games reaching base to 19.
- With his 1-for-3 performance, shortstop Easton Cline has now reached base in 13 consecutive games.
- Shane Melick added two RBIs to his season total with his first-inning home run, and remains in the team lead for multi-RBI games, with 14. Melick has 48 RBIs this spring, a team-high.
- Melick also leads The Cru in HRs with 11. Thursday’s HR puts him at No. 2 in program history for homers in a single season, just four shy of tying Malek Bolin’s 15 in 2022.
- Catcher Jasson Hemmerling Jr. recorded his second-straight multi-hit game, going 2-for-4 out of the seventh spot in the lineup. He has now raised his batting average to .317, 111 points higher than it was when the month of April began (.206).
Up Next
UMHB faces Hardin-Simmons on Friday morning, aiming at its first ASC Tournament win since 2022. The Cru split its season series in Belton with HSU, going 2-2 against former Cru assistant coach Mitch Wilson and the Cowboys at the beginning of April. Watch that game on goetbutigers.com. 11 a.m. first pitch from Marshall.
