Baseball team off to fast start
But coach expected an even better record than 9-3.
SAN MARCOS — If Texas State baseball coach Ty Harrington had been told before the season that his team would win nine of the first 12 games, you might have expected him to have been the happiest man on campus.
The fact that the Bobcats (9-3) have done just that and that Harrington isn’t even smiling says a lot about the team’s potential and their coach’s expectations. Texas State has played 11 of its first dozen games at home and needed a fast start, but with two of those losses by one-run in extra innings, things could have been even better.
Texas State was handed just its third loss Wednesday, falling to Valparaiso in a game that the Bobcats could have, and likely should have, won.
Winning games late or pulling out close ones have been the Bobcats’ hallmark early this season. Until the loss to Valparaiso, Texas State had won four of its last seven outings by scoring runs in the seventh inning or later — a streak highlighted on Saturday when Garrett Mattlage blasted an eighth-inning grand slam to hand the Bobcats a 9-7 victory over Wagner.
Eight of Texas State’s first dozen games have been decided by two runs or less.
“We’ve won a lot of ball games late, but when you live dangerously, you run the risk of losing games like we did against Valparaiso,” Harrington said. “I really thought that our team would be better offensively than we’ve shown early this season. We need to find out the guys who want to get the right approaches offensively and go to work.”
The Bobcats are hitting just .239 as a team and have an ERA of 2.88, with 13 of the 49 runs allowed by the pitching staff recorded as unearned thanks to 21 errors.
Texas State plays at Washington State (2-7) in a three-game series beginning Friday. The Bobcats return to San Marcos to host 10th-ranked Texas on Tuesday.
On to the Sun Belt tourney:
The women’s basketball team, which used a second-half comeback to beat South Alabama on Wednesday in Mobile, has guaranteed itself one of the top four seeds in the Sun Belt tournament, which begins Wednesday in New Orleans.
The Bobcats could move to as high as a third-seed in the championships with a win over Troy and an Arkansas-Little Rock loss to Louisiana-Monroe on Saturday.
Learfield Sports to handle multimedia:
Learfield Sports will represent the multimedia rights and corporate partnerships for Texas State and create a local entity, to be called Texas State Sports Properties, after the Plano-based company’s recent acquisition of Nelligan Sports Marketing.
Texas State Sports Properties will manage the Bobcats’ rights that include signage, corporate partnerships, event marketing, radio playby-play and the football coach’s shows, and website advertising on Texas State Athletics’ website.