File photo of Riley Bender by Luke Zayas/Backwards Hat Photography
MARSHALL, Texas — Twice UMHB experienced the heartbreak of ending up on the wrong side of a walk-off on Saturday. Both came in the span of just over four hours, the second perhaps more painful than the first, a season-ender that seemed to unfold very slowly even as it played out in real-time.
In the ninth inning of an ASC Tournament elimination contest under the lights at Woods Field, Hardin-Simmons’ Benji Fielder lined a 1-0 pitch past the diving glove of UMHB shortstop Easton Cline and into left field, a timely hit for the Cowboys with Justin Blancaflor on second base and the game knotted at 7-7. Left fielder Braden Fuentes—inserted into the game as a pinch hitter in the seventh—scooped it off the grass as Blancaflor headed for home without hesitation and fired a strike to catcher Jacob Newland at the plate.
But the throw, which sailed just past Blancaflor down the third-base line and got to Newland a step ahead of the runner, wasn’t secured as Newland looked to swipe the tag. Blancaflor scored as he rolled across the plate, keeping HSU’s season alive in an 8-7 win, while UMHB’s players looked on with stunned expressions, their season having ended one win shy of a spot in Sunday’s championship.
It marked the second one-run loss of the day for The Cru, who beat HSU, 10-5, in the opening game of the tournament on Thursday. In the winner’s bracket duel midway through the afternoon, ETBU knocked off UMHB in similar walk-off fashion, winning 6-5 when freshman Carter Nannini lofted a short flyball that bounced in front of Crusader centerfielder Cameron Talburt and allowed Carson Livesay to score from second.
UMHB’s 2026 season ends with a 25-18 mark, having secured the program’s first ASC Tournament win since 2022.
The day marked a curtain call for a number of UMHB’s senior position players, including Preseason All-American Riley Bender, whose 26 career home runs in a Crusader uniform are tied for No. 2 in program history. The presence of his powerful swing was especially evident in the final two games of his college career, as the Kingwood, Texas native held nothing back, ending up as the reason UMHB found itself tied in the ninth inning in the first place in both contests.
Trailing ETBU, 5-4, through eight innings after initially leading 3-0 on a second-inning homer from Chris Perez, Bender led off the ninth. Facing stalwart reliever Aiden Leonard, Bender drove the third pitch he saw deep over the wall in left field, knotting the score while he reached the single-season 10-homer mark for the first time in his career. The solo home run gave UMHB life, putting the pressure on the Tigers in the bottom of the ninth.
But Bender’s power hitting only worked itself into the storyline more in the nightcap. After falling behind 2-0, the Crusaders responded with five unanswered runs in the third inning, starting with Cameron Talburt’s RBI triple that scored Perez and Jesse Hemmerling. Two frames later, Bender turned on a two-out pitch from HSU reliever Caleb Reynolds, launching it off the scoreboard in left field for a much-needed insurance run and a 6-4 lead.
Then came the eighth, HSU having evened the score on an RBI single to left from Fielder that brought Blancaflor across the plate, the precursor to the Cowboys’ dramatic ninth-inning sequence. Bender dug in for his third at-bat of the evening—and seventh of the day—and with two strikes, saw a pitch he liked. It didn’t clear the wall in left-center field by much, but it was enough for a second homer and a 7-6 lead, clutch-hitting from an experienced catalyst in UMHB’s lineup for the last three seasons. It went down as his 12th home run of the season, tying Shane Melick’s 2025 total for the third-most in UMHB history.
Bender’s career in Belton concludes with a .324 career batting average and .615 slugging percentage, the latter going down as the No. 2 mark in UMHB history behind Joseph Villegas’ .668 slugging percentage, set from 2007-2010.
HSU answered in the bottom of the inning on Catcher Ridings’ RBI base hit to center field, tying the score and setting up the Cowboys’ walk-off win an inning later.
Alongside Bender, fellow seniors Jasson Hemmerling and Talburt posted two-hit performances against HSU, accounting for six of The Cru’s seven hits. Perez joined Talburt as the only two Crusaders who had at least one hit in both of Saturday’s games, with Perez following up his three-run homer against ETBU with a 1-for-2 performance and two walks in the day’s second contest.
On the mound, Alex Hill took the ball in Game 1, going 6.1 innings against ETBU’s potent lineup. The sophomore held the Tiger bats scoreless through the first four before surrendering a four-run fifth, giving up four singles and walking two in the first seven batters he faced in the inning. But Hill kept UMHB in it, working through the ETBU order a full three times before facing the top of the lineup once more in the seventh, and it was a one-run game when he handed the ball off to reliever Jacob Haynes. Haynes promptly induced a double play to get out of the seventh, and worked 1.1 innings without allowing a hit. Mason Semmelmann was on the mound for the game’s final play, and gave up only a single hit, but it was Nannini’s game-winning single.
With the pitching depth tested in the nightcap, Mike Stawski went to his bullpen three times against the Cowboys. Starter Cole Morkovsky exited after just 2.1 innings, and Caleb Kennedy and Reid Davis each faced no more than seven batters in their appearances out of the bullpen. But Ryland Anders went 3.1 innings in a high-pressure situation, helping keep UMHB in it, though HSU’s bats had too much left in the tank on an evening when the Crusaders struggled to string together enough hits to keep pace. While UMHB put 13 runners on base, aided by six walks, The Cru tallied just three hits over the final five innings, two of which came from Bender’s homers.
As HSU celebrated in the outfield following its walk-off win Saturday night, the Crusaders saw the door close on a campaign in which they won 25 games for the second time under Stawski and for only the fourth time in the program’s D-III history. It included wins over now-No. 19 Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, RV Texas Lutheran, SLIAC regular season champion Webster, and MIAC regular season runner-up Macalester. The Cru has now won at least 22 games for the fifth time in the last six seasons.
HSU will play ETBU for the ASC championship—and NCAA Tournament automatic bid—at 1 p.m. on Sunday in Marshall. Should ETBU win, the Tigers would take the title, though an HSU victory would force a winner-take-all contest later in the day to wrap up the double-elimination tournament.
