Photo of Nolan Williams courtesy of UMHB Sports Information
MARSHALL, Texas — With his team trailing Hardin-Simmons, 5-4, in the eighth inning of Thursday’s ASC Tournament opener, Nolan Williams stepped into the batter’s box as UMHB’s season-long leader in RBIs.
With speedy centerfielder Cameron Talburt standing on second, Williams found himself with a chance to do what he does best: drive in a run. Under the lights of Woods Field, the sophomore from Salado did just that, raising his RBI total to 45 with his first collegiate postseason hit. Williams doubled to the left-center field gap with two outs, scoring Talburt, who tied it up at 5-5.
“We’ve been dying for a two-out hit for a while,” UMHB head coach Mike Stawski noted afterwards.
Williams’ game-tying RBI double in the eighth set up a five-run ninth from The Cru, as the visitors from Belton pulled away swiftly from the Cowboys. The Crusaders rallied with nine unanswered runs in the final four innings to win, 10-5, notching their first ASC Tournament victory since 2022.
The statement-maker in the ninth? It was Williams again, who drove in both Talburt and John Van Huis on a two-strike single up the middle to secure the five-run lead. Williams, UMHB’s left fielder, went 2-for-6 with 3 RBIs in the defeat of HSU, having now hit safely in 11 of The Cru’s last 13 games.
He was one of four Crusaders with multiple hits, as Talburt and shortstop Easton Cline—UMHB’s leadoff hitters in the lineup—each had three apiece. Right fielder Tyler Martin added two of his own, and scored twice, hitting out of the sixth spot in the order, and Williams batted cleanup, illustrating the depth in the UMHB lineup. Six of UMHB’s nine starters recorded at least one hit and six scored a run in the come-from-behind victory.
“I think it’s just the mentality of our guys,” Cline, who went 3-for-5 with 2 RBIs, said postgame. “Nobody has doubt. Even when we were down 5-1, I have confidence in every single one of those guys. We had the huge pinch-hit at-bat from Tyler Betts, and just people stepping up to the plate, even when they weren’t in the game the whole time. Our guys have to trust the process, go back to what we know that works, and really trust it.”
For as decisive as Williams was at the plate, Mason Semmelmann proved equally as clutch on the mound. A season after UMHB’s bullpen collapsed in the late innings of an elimination duel with HSU in the league tournament, Semmelmann’s outing had the opposite effect against the Cowboy lineup, delivering three scoreless innings of relief while allowing just two hits. The junior right-hander faced 11 batters, inducing five flyouts and a trio of groundouts while striking out Benji Fielder for the first out of the ninth.
His performance on the mound kept HSU at bay while the Crusader bats heated up, as eight of UMHB’s 12 hits came in the sixth inning or later. It was largely a continuation of Semmelmann’s solid weekend against the Cowboys in Abilene after he tossed 3.1 scoreless innings over the span of two outings to cap off the regular season. The Cedar Park native surrendered multiple earned runs in five straight appearances between March 6 and April 16, but has now gone 6.1 innings over three outings without allowing a run, a promising trend for the UMHB coaching staff to lean on as the tournament continues.
Semmelmann’s stellar relief appearance was set up by a quality start from Zach Hampton, who went 6.0 innings with two earned runs and eight hits, holding HSU scoreless for four straight innings between the second and fifth. That stretch, Stawski said postgame, proved key in the overall direction of the game for UMHB, even though a three-run sixth briefly pushed HSU’s lead to 5-1. Hampton is now an impressive 6-1 in his freshman season, having picked up the win in each of the last three starts in which the Corpus Christi native has earned the decision.
“Honestly, it was the couple of zeros Zach threw up in the middle of that game,” Stawski said. “That’s something we’ve been preaching down the stretch, and quite honestly, had not had a lot of success getting a continuous zero from our pitching staff to let our hitters get back in the game. He had a couple eight, nine-pitch innings and that allowed our hitters to get back in rhythm.”
The Crusaders’ win advanced them to a 3 p.m. Saturday afternoon duel with top-seeded ETBU, a team ranked No. 23 nationally in the most recent D3baseball.com/NCBWA Top 25 Poll. The Tigers, who beat Howard Payne in a 12-4 win on Thursday, rolled through ASC play with a perfect 12-0 mark, sweeping a four-game series with UMHB two weeks ago in Marshall. Back on the same field in a postseason setting, The Cru can keep the revenge tour rolling and clinch a spot in Saturday’s championship game with a win.
Notably, Crusader ace Alex Hill—whose 79 strikeouts lead the team—did not pitch Thursday, leaving him available to start against ETBU. Hill has a 3.66 ERA and 6-3 record in 11 starts, and went 4.1 innings with five earned runs in his appearance against the Tigers on April 16.
“Winning Game 1 is critical,” Stawski said afterwards. “Someone is going to have to come out of the loser’s bracket to get back to the championship game, but coming out of it early on is a really daunting task. To try to win that many in a row, it’s hard to plan for that and you really have to have deep pitching.
“It’s four good teams, and you’re going to have to play just about everyone in this tournament to win the thing. But getting that first one is so critical because it just lessens the path of adversity down the stretch.”
Saturday’s ASC Tournament Schedule
11:00 a.m. | No. 4 Howard Payne vs. No. 2 Hardin-Simmons (elimination game)
3:00 p.m. | No. 3 Mary Hardin-Baylor vs. No. 1 East Texas Baptist
7:00 p.m. | Winner of HPU/HSU vs. Loser of UMHB/ETBU (elimination game)
