By Jerry Briggs
Special for The JB Replay
The two-time defending tournament champions in the American Athletic Conference have worked their postseason magic once again. Fifth-seeded Tulane bashed a season-high five home runs Thursday in a 10-6 victory over No. 1 UTSA in a winners’ bracket game at Clearwater, Fla.
With a 2-0 record this week, the Green Wave have now won eight straight at this event dating back to 2023. As a result, they will advance into Saturday’s semifinals.
The Roadrunners, now 1-1 in the American Baseball Championship, will play Friday at noon (Central time) in an elimination game against the Florida Atlantic Owls. The winner will move into Saturday’s semis needing two wins against the Green Wave to advance to Sunday’s finals.
For the third straight year, Tulane has started the tournament with two straight wins. It’s one of the reasons their players call the BayCare Ballpark their home away from home.
“I would like to think of that as a body of work,” Tulane coach Jay Uhlman said. “It doesn’t always work out the way we’ve wanted it to work out in terms of volumes of wins. But I think the thing we do is, we teach through the wins. We teach through the losses. We teach through the tough times. Our guys believe.
“We’re like family. We have arguments and fights and disagreements. I don’t give everyone what they want all the time, and that’s a hard pill to swallow. But I think the body of work as you go through a season, the trust even in times when they don’t get what they want, that we’re doing everything we can the right way.
“It’s really important.”
James Agabedis III, a Tulane junior from Sudbury, Mass., hit two of the Green Wave’s homers. He blasted solo shots in the fourth and eighth innings. All the slugging backed the pitching of left-handed relief specialist Taylor Montiel, who worked three and two thirds scoreless innings to close the game.
Monteil (5-2) allowed only one hit and one walk while striking out four. Connor Kelley (3-1) was the losing pitcher for the Roadrunners.
Trailing for most of the game, the Roadrunners came to life in the sixth with three runs to tie. UTSA strung together four hits, including an RBI single by Caden Miller and a two-run single by Lorenzo Morresi.
Morresi’s liner with the bases loaded landed safely in center field, bringing in Miller from third and James Taussig from second to tie the score, 6-6. A key play unfolded when Nathan Hodge beat out a fielder’s choice, only to be erased on double play when Moressi was called for interference on a slide at second base.
The eighth inning was the undoing for the Roadrunners, who entered with a 14-1 record in their last 15 games. First, Agabedis homered off UTSA’s Kelley to break a tie and give the Green Wave a one-run lead. After Kelley was pulled for Rob Orloski, Jason Wachs blasted a two-run shot to make it 9-6.
UTSA coach Pat Hallmark tipped his cap to Monteil, a redshirt junior from Brentwood, Tenn. At one point, Monteil struck out four batters in a row.
“He’s good,” the coach said. “He’s been doing that all year. If you look at his numbers, he doesn’t get hit. I think it’s something like, it’s well less than a hit an inning … He’s got that fastball that moves. A little bit on the frontside where he hides the ball. He throws hard.
“I didn’t expect to hit him real good. But I did think if we kept it tied or within one run that anything’s possible. The two-run homer (in the eighth) after the solo hurt us a little bit. That was a bad call. Rob executed the pitch. The call was a mistake. We called a high fastball – to a high fastball hitter.”
Hallmark said UTSA is one of the few teams in the nation that have the catchers call the pitches and that Andrew Stucky and Morresi do a great job in that part of the game.
“We just happened to make a mistake there,” Hallmark said. “(The high fastball) is Rob’s best pitch. So I knew why Stucky called it. He called his pitcher’s best pitch. So, I don’t know that it’s a mistake. But, Wachs is a good high fastball hitter.”
The coach said he’s more frustrated with the pitches early in the game from starter Zach Royse that were thrown in the middle of the plate. Royse gave up six runs on seven hits, including three home runs.
Records
Tulane 32-24
UTSA 43-12
Notable
If UTSA comes up short of the title this week in Clearwater, the Roadrunners remain a strong candidate to gain an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament based on their record (43-12), their regular-season title (23-4 in conference) and their No. 22 standing in the national rating percentage index coming into Thursday.
Since the AAC baseball conference formed for the 2014 season, each team that has won or shared a regular-season title has received a bid to an NCAA regional, either with an at-large or an automatic bid. UTSA clinched a share of the AAC regular-season title on May 4 after it swept a three-game road series at South Florida. It clinched the title outright on May 9 with a road victory at East Carolina.
When UTSA swept Rice last week in San Antonio to close the regular season, it secured victories in all nine AAC series on its schedule. Five of them were three-game sweeps. Moreover, they won the AAC by five games over second-place Charlotte.
By hitting the 40-win plateau on May 15 and reaching win No. 42 after the regular-season finale last Saturday, UTSA became only the seventh AAC team in history to take 40-plus victories into the conference tournament. The previous six all eventually received NCAA bids.
NCAA selections will be announced Monday.
Thursday’s results
Tulane 10, UTSA 6
East Carolina 6, Charlotte 5
Friday’s games
FAU vs. UTSA, elimination game, noon
South Florida vs. Charlotte, elimination game, 47 minutes after the first game
Saturday’s games
Semifinals
Tulane vs. FAU or UTSA, 8 a.m.
East Carolina vs. South Florida or Charlotte, 47 minutes after the first game
Tulane vs. FAU or UTSA, if necessary, TBD
East Carolina vs. South Florida or Charlotte, if necessary, TBD
Sunday’s game
Finals
Semifinals winners play in the title game, 11 a.m.