Oklahoma State University Athletics
Oklahoma State Falls To Texas 3-2
June 06, 2003 | Cowboy Baseball
That was the case in Friday night's opener at Disch-Falk Field, but the result was not what Holliday and the Cowboys wanted as Texas hung on for a 3-2 win.
OSU sent the go-ahead run to the plate in the top of the ninth inning, but Daylon Monette grounded to second for the final out, stranding Jeff Salazar at third.
Leaving runners on against the outstanding UT pitching duo of Brad Halsey and reliever Huston Street proved costly all night as the Cowboys stranded nine runners on the bases in dropping to 8-7 in the Big 12 and 29-13 overall.
The Longhorns maintained their lead in the conference race with the win, improving to 13-6 in league play and 35-11 overall.
"Good teams on the road, if you want to become great, you've got to get base hits with two outs," Holliday said. "We didn't do it. We got one in the eighth, but I'm not too sure Halsey didn't already have it in the bank."
Halsey, UT's junior left-hander, silenced the Cowboy bats for most of the night to improve to 6-1 on the season. He hurled 7 2/3 innings, allowing just six hits and two runs. OSU's lone runs came in the eighth when Jose Virgil grounded a ball off UT third baseman Omar Quintanilla's glove. The ball rolled to the leftfield wall for a double and plated Paul Powell and Nebasett Brown.
The Cowboys threatened in their final at-bat against Street, but the hard-throwing righthander got out of trouble after giving up a two-out triple to Salazar. Street picked up his fourth save of the season with 1 1/3 innings of scoreless relief in which he struck out three.
While Texas' pitching duo was impressive, OSU got another outstanding effort from sophomore righthander.
After back-to-back complete game wins, Baker suffered his first loss of the season despite allowing just one earned run in eight innings due to an OSU defense that committed three errors behind him.
The Longhorns got on the board in their first at-bat, when Tim Moss scored on OSU's first fielding miscue of the game, a throwing error by Jason Jaramillo on an attempted stolen base by Brandon Fahey. The Moss/Fahey combination would be a thorn in OSU's side all night as the sophomore infielders each went 3-for-4 at the plate. Moss scored twice, while Fahey drove in a pair of runs.
Salazar and freshman Josh Fields were the lone offensive weapons for OSU. Salazar had a pair of hits in five at-bats, while Fields was 3-for-4. The two teams will battle in the second game of the series today at 2 p.m. with a pitching matchup pitting OSU's Chris Reilly (6-0, 2.53 ERA) against Longhorns' ace Justin Simmons (11-0, 2.17).
