COLLEGE STATION- The Texas Southern Tigers baseball team dropped a 5-0 decision to Texas A&M in their opening game at the 2015 NCAA Baseball Tournament.
Ryan Rios pitched an impressive 6.2 innings allowing just two earned runs.
"We knew we had to control the early innings and I thought we did a really good job controlling their swings," said TSU head coach Michael Robertson. "The middle of their order is just really tough.
You have to wrestle with Blake Allemand and Ryne Birk. We made pitches and I thought we did extremely well the first couple of innings. We went back and forth on the pitch selection but we ran a ball back over the plate and they got a little bit of momentum from the Nick Bank's home run."
TSU trailed the Aggies 2-0 going into the bottom of the eighth inning but Texas A&M was able to add three runs to push to a five run lead.
Texas Southern nearly made the game very interesting with a hit to right field that potentially could have scored two runs, but a diving catch helped hold TSU scoreless and get the Aggies out of the inning unscaved.
"The score wasn't indicative of the type of game it was," said Robertson. "Matt Kent was really tough. I have to give a lot of credit to the right fielder Nick Banks. A lot of right fielders would have let that ball drop and we would have scored two if it were not for that play."
The Tigers will now get set to face Coastal Carolina on Saturday at noon at Blue Bell Park in College Station.Â
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