EDINBURG, Texas — Winning on the road, the Texas A&M-Corpus Christi baseball team edged UTRGV 2-1 Wednesday night at the UTRGV Baseball Stadium to bring back home the South Texas Showdown Trophy to Corpus Christi.
The South Texas Showdown, presented by Rally Credit Union, is an annual rivalry series in which Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and UTRGV compete against each other in 12 sports. With baseball's win, the Islanders take a 33.5 to 17.5 lead in this year's competition and with only 13 points left for grabs, A&M-Corpus Christi is now the 2023-24 champion.
"I thought our guys played great tonight," said head coach Scott Malone. "I thought we played great baseball and the whole team is super excited to be bringing home the South Texas Showdown trophy."
The champion retains possession of the trophy until the following year's trophy presentation. The Islanders now lead the all-time series 6-2.
On the way to that institutional success, the Islanders looked to their pitchers for the low-scoring duel. Senior Evans Hendricks got the nod to go 5.0 innings, only conceding the one run off a two-hit outing while striking out four. Junior Joshua Flaugher followed him up for 2.0 innings of work, striking out three of the six outs he was credited. Finally, senior Maddox Thornton came in for the save opportunity and shut down UTRGV, retiring all six outs in consecutive order.
"Evans was really good on the mound and set the tone early. Josh then bridged us to the eighth where Maddox made his first appearance out of the bullpen this year and was just electric to completely shut UTRGV down. He did an incredible job against a really good team with a big home crowd that was on the edge of their seat waiting for a big rally, but Maddox was too good to let them," said Malone.
Backing up the mound was juniors Mario Mendoza Jr. and Isaac Webb as the duo connected for both of A&M-Corpus Christi's run. Mendoza reached base in both the third and fifth innings and got himself into scoring position before Webb drove him in both times with an RBI-single.
Webb has now continued his streak of recording a hit in every game this season. Entering the game, he was ranked #3 in the NCAA in total hits with 19, tacking on two more after his seventh multi-hit game of the year.
The Islanders will now return with the trophy in tow and prepare for another weekend of home baseball as they host Abilene Christian in a three-game series.
