Texas baseball earns series victory after 6-5 win over Louisiana on Saturday

The Texas Longhorns baseball team wasted no time in earning their first series victory of the season after a 6-5 victory over the Louisiana Ragin’ Cajuns in Lafayette on Saturday.

Texas sent junior right-handed pitcher Blair Henley to the mound in game two looking to build off of a big opening night win.

After a slow offensive start on Friday night, the Texas bats appeared to shake off any rust that held them back just a night ago as they got things going early on Saturday afternoon with a five run 2nd inning. Each run coming with two outs.

The comfort of the 5-0 lead lasted all of about five minutes, as Louisiana responded to the offensive outburst with one of their own, scoring four runs on five hits in the bottom half of the second.

Head coach David Pierce appeared to recognize rather quickly that Henley did not have his good stuff working and made an early call to the bullpen after getting just two innings out of his starter.

Redshirt freshman Cole Quintanilla would enter the game to make his Texas Longhorns debut after missing all of the 2018 season while recovering from Tommy John surgery. Quintanilla worked 2.2 innings of scoreless baseball and picked up the winning decision for Texas.

The two teams traded goose eggs until the top of the seventh when third baseman Ryan Reynolds launched the first Texas home run of 2019 to extend the Horns lead 6-4.

Tristan Stevens, Owen Meaney and Nico O’Donnell were tasked with recording the final 13 outs of the ballgame, but things got dicey in the ninth as Louisiana brought the tying run to the plate with just one out.

The Ragin’ Cajuns cut the lead to one after Hunter Kasuls sent a sacrifice fly to right field plating Daniel Lahare before O’Donnell responded with a huge game-ending strikeout of Hayden Cantrelle, giving the sophomore his first save of the young 2019 season.

The Longhorns will go for the sweep as they wrap up the series on Sunday afternoon. Freshman right-handed Coy Cobb is your projected starter. First pitch is scheduled for 1 p.m Central on Ragin’ Cajuns TV.