Longhorns cruise in regional opener
AUSTIN — Tristan Stevens’ first active taste of NCAA tournament action hardly could have gone better.
The long-ago junior college transfer with a surgically repaired right elbow was borderline immaculate Friday afternoon at DischFalk Field. The 6-foot-2 righty delivered precision darts all over the strike zone against Southern, which succumbed to the brutal efficiency of Stevens
and national No. 2 national seed Texas in front of a roiling burnt-orange sea of fans.
Making his first NCAA Tournament start, Stevens glided through seven scoreless innings in the Longhorns’ 11-0 win. He threw 67 of 82 pitches for strikes (81.2 percent strike rate), struck out six, allowed four hits, faced just two two-ball counts and didn’t issue a walk with 5,447 in attendance.
Starts don’t get much more economical than that, especially when they’re made in the heat of double-elimination postseason baseball. And Stevens credited this brisk, pain-free outing to his unruffled mentality.
“It’s just another day,” Stevens said. “The circumstances shouldn’t change. Obviously, the environment’s a little different and what’s at stake is a little different, but it’s the same game. And when you treat it that way, you know, there should be no pressure. I think we handled that as a team really well.”
Texas (43-15) provided Stevens (10-3) with more than enough support in the field and at the plate.
Center fielder Mike Antico drew a leadoff walk and, as usual, wreaked havoc on the basepaths. He stole second with ease, then jetted to third on the catcher’s throwing error. Texas first baseman Zach Zubia plated him with a deep sacrifice fly.
Designated hitter Ivan Melendez then sauntered to the plate with a mind to snap out of a recent 1-for-14 funk. He did so with mighty panache, launching a solo home run that scraped the clouds and rebounded high off the road behind the leftfield fence.
Texas never looked back from that 2-0 lead.
The Longhorns needed just two innings of pitchpummeling to chase Southern starter Jacob Snyder (1-3) from the game. And the second inning was even worse — for Snyder and Southern — than the first.
With two outs and the bases loaded, Texas second baseman Mitchell Daly ripped a pitch to deep center field. The ball smacked off the glove of lunging Southern center fielder Isaiah Adams, allowing Antico, left fielder Dylan Campbell (Strake Jesuit) and shortstop Trey Faltine to score. Zubia, who also went to Strake Jesuit, added a sixth earned run to Snyder’s ledger with a wellplaced RBI double, his second of a team-high three hits on the day.
Texas tacked on five more runs off three Southern (20-29) relievers, including a two-run moon shot by third baseman Cam Williams that crashed down near where Melendez’s earlier home run landed. Catcher Silas Ardoin also added two RBIs on a pair of hits.
“It felt good felt good to get off to a hot start,” Ardoin said. “We kind of expected it. Of course, everybody’s gonna look at the opponent and say that maybe that factored into it, but we don’t believe in that. We came out and just put together good at-bats.”
Aside from a rare second-inning fielding error by Travis alumnus Faltine — he had committed six errors in 245 fielding chances entering this game — the Longhorns again were a supreme safety net in the field. And even on that play, Antico swooped in to retrieve the missed grounder and throw out the runner advancing to third base.
Texas followed its other error up with a double play to close out the top of the eighth. And aside from those two miscues, there wasn’t much drama for the Longhorns defense as Stevens’ pitches danced all over the strike zone, befuddling Southern’s array of hitters all afternoon.
Texas relievers Palmer Wenzel and Jared Southard kept it clean, too. They allowed just one baserunner over the final two innings, preserving the rest of the team’s bullpen arms for the more trying days ahead.
“I think it kind of just helps sets the tone for the weekend, can kind of get this ball rolling again,” Stevens said. “This game just kind of gets the momentum going for this team.”
Up next, the Longhorns will face the winner No. 2 seed Arizona State, which beat No. 3 seed Fairfield 7-6 in Friday’s night game. That Austin Regional winners’ bracket game is scheduled for 6 p.m. Saturday.