Jags closing regular season at Texas A&M-Texarkana
| Final | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | R | H | E |
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0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 8 | 2 |
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0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 8 | 1 |
The UHV baseball team will wrap up its regular season when it heads to Texas A&M-Texarkana for a three-game Red River Athletic Conference series at 1 p.m. this Friday.
The Jaguars (21-24, 15-12) are a game behind the Eagles (22-21, 16-11) heading into the final series before the conference tournament. A series win would push UHV into the fifth seed at next week's conference tournament in Sterlington, La.
UHV is coming off an 11-7 win over LSU-Alexandria in its last game.
"I don't know if seeding is the most important thing," said head coach Jonathan Stavinoha. "We want to play good baseball and get some momentum going on a short turnaround for the tournament. Winning the last game last week left us with a good taste in our mouth. Hopefully we get a little momentum going for when we're playing in a win-or-go-home type of atmosphere."
In Saturday's win, Brady Parker won his third consecutive start and picked up his sixth win of the year after striking out a career-high 10 batters in six innings pitched.
The Jaguars have been able to ride strong starting pitching this season with Mason Longoria (67) and Julian Garcia (66) ranking third and fourth, respectively, in strikeouts in the RRAC.
Longoria has struck out 26 batters in his last four starts.
"He's always had the ability, I think it's more about the mindset," Stavinoha said. "He's starting to become a dog. He's going to keep you in the fight with every single pitch. Between Mason and Brady, you love to see that heading towards the end of the year."
Hayden Leopold, Raul Lopez and Haldemel Perez each had multi-hit games in Saturday's win.
Perez joined Kaden Fikac, Zach Lee and Ty Williams atop the team lead for home runs with his seventh of the year. As a team, UHV ranks second in the RRAC in homers with 39.
Leopold's two hits in the win marked the 17th time in the last 18 games the Columbus native has hit safely for the Jaguars. In those 18 games, he's hitting .350 with 10 RBIs.
"We've got to keep having competitive ABs and not get ourselves out," Stavinoha said. "We just need to control the things we can control and let everything happen after making contact; whatever happens, happens. We're going to hustle, we're going to do the little things right and we're going to keep this momentum rolling forward."