Texas Baseball: Longhorns lose tough one to Mizzou to finish weekend

What could’ve been a big weekend for the Texas baseball program was diminished by a March 1 9-8 loss at the hands of the Mizzou Tigers.

Just when it looked like the Texas baseball program could work their way into the top 25 rankings for the first time in a long while, they faltered to round out the weekend. Texas had a decent start to the weekend, despite raking in their first loss of the season on Feb. 28. They had to take on three teams from the SEC over the weekend in the Shriners Hospitals for Children College Classic, which took place at Minute Maid Park in Houston (home of the Houston Astros).

The Texas Longhorns baseball program first took on the No. 11 ranked LSU Tigers on Feb. 28. They fell short in dramatic fashion at the hands of LSU, by the final score of 4-3 on Friday night. Texas did manage to follow that up with a very nice win over the former Southwestern Conference foe and No. 6 ranked Arkansas Feb. 29 by the final score of 8-7.

Beating No. 6 Arkansas was by far the best win that the Longhorns have on their resume so far this season. And they had a good chance to keep the momentum rolling on the first calendar day of March against the former Big 12 foe Mizzou Tigers. But in what would be the third game decided by one run in this weekend college classic for the Longhorns, they fell short to their second Tigers opponent.

Mizzou had a big five-run sixth inning to help them hold off the Longhorns late run and win by the final score of 9-8. Kolby Kubichek racked up his first loss of the season (now 1-1). Kubichek had a really rough outing, as he gave up three earned runs over the span of just 0.1 innings on the mound.

First baseman Zach Zubia, third baseman Cam Williams, and left fielder Eric Kennedy each had two runs batted in Sunday afternoon. But the Texas pitching, and mainly the defense, couldn’t get it done in the end. Texas had a whopping five errors in this game, which meant that the pitchers had just five of the nine runs earned.

Mizzou did outhit Texas on the day, by a margin of 13-10. They also didn’t have any errors. Mizzou’s gloves helped their cause a lot more than the Texas defense did. That put a solid efforts from the bats to waste to round out the weekend.

Next up for this Longhorns baseball team is yet another difficult non-conference matchup, this time against the Arizona Wildcats out of the PAC-12 on March 3. This will just be a one-game series before Cal State-Fullerton comes to UFCU Disch-Falk Field on March 6.

Texas will carry a record of 10-2 into that game. But they have now lost two of their last three games after starting out 9-0 this year.