Nathan Hodge (11) gets the ‘boom’ treatment from older brother Ty Hodge after slamming a two-run home run in the third inning. – Photo by Joe Alexander
By Jerry Briggs
Special for The JB Replay
Inspiring hope for a deep run in the NCAA tournament this season and for an improved fan experience in coming years, the UTSA Roadrunners just keep adding to their legacy as perhaps the best baseball team in school history.
Two weeks ago in Florida, they clinched at least a share of the regular-season title in the American Athletic Conference. Last weekend in North Carolina, they won the title outright.
Returning home to San Antonio this week, they opened their ninth and final three-game, AAC series against the Rice Owls, won the first game and set the school record for victories in a season.
UTSA starting pitcher Conor Myles (5-1) earned the victory after pitching five innings. He allowed four runs on seven hits. – Photo by Joe Alexander
Now, a day later, they’ve taken yet another step in their journey. The Roadrunners jumped on the Owls early Friday night, scored five runs in the first inning off J.D. McCracken, and then kept on applying the pressure throughout the evening en route to an easy 11-4 decision.
UTSA is now 2-0 against Rice in the series leading into Saturday’s regular-season finale, meaning that they have effectively run the table, winning all nine of their three-game sets against AAC competition.
Brothers Ty and Nathan Hodge, who played shortstop and third base, respectively, led the charge against the Owls with three RBI apiece. Ty Hodge slapped a two-run single to highlight a five-run first inning and Nathan, the younger of the brothers from College Station, slammed a two-run home run in the third.
When his second homer of the season landed in the screen above the left field wall, the Roadrunners had built a 7-3 lead. The Owls cut the deficit to three runs in the middle of the game but couldn’t do much more than watch the Roadrunners pull away for their 41st victory of the season.
With the win, the Roadrunners improved to 41-11 on the season and 22-4 in conference. They have won 16 of their last 18 games and are 15-2 in their last 17 in the AAC.
UTSA coach Pat Hallmark said Friday night that he thinks the team has the potential to reach College World Series in Omaha, Neb. His statement came after a reporter asked if he thought that his program had reached a ceiling on what he believed it could achieve when he took the job back in 2020.
What the team has accomplished to this point in the season isn’t the ceiling, he said.
“This team can go to Omaha,” Hallmark added.
He said the Roadrunners will need to “keep being competitive hitters” and to identify maybe a few more reliable pitchers on the roster to help them maneuver through the AAC postseason and the first two weekends of the NCAA tournament.
“I don’t think we’ve reached our ceiling,” Hallmark said. “The ceiling is Omaha. That’s what we’re going for. We need to find a guy or two, like, the guys who are going to pitch tomorrow. We need to find three to six outs. Because with five guys? I don’t know if we can get through an entire regional with only five guys, which is what we’ve got now. We probably could. But that’s five guys who all have to pitch (well).
“Nobody can have a bad game, and that’s hard to do. It’s like hitting. All nine guys don’t (normally) have good games. So the ceiling is higher than what we’ve already done.”
With the AAC tournament starting next week in Clearwater, Fla., Hallmark suggested that the top-seeded Roadrunners shouldn’t put any limits on what they believe they can achieve. He said that at the start of this season, he would have been happy with the current results.
But he now sees this UTSA team as comparable in ability as Rice teams in 2006, 2007 and 2008 that reached the College World Series.
“This team can play offense with any of them, and defense,” he said. “And our top five pitchers are as good as some of them. But we may have been a little deeper on the mound on those (teams at Rice).”
Senior Braylon Owens pitched two and two thirds scoreless innings in his last game at Roadrunner Field. – Photo by Joe Alexander
UTSA is 20th in the NCAA’s ratings percentage index, or, RPI. The team is also ranked 25th in Baseball America, one of the prominent college baseball media polls. Playing at home, the Roadrunners have been nearly unbeatable this season. They’re 24-2 and riding a six-game winning streak at Roadrunner Field.
Fan interest in the team also is growing. Despite opening-pitch temperatures in the first two games of the Rice series hovering at 100 degrees, the grandstands and the outlying areas have been bustling with people, many of them hunkering down in the shade of trees on the left field side of the ball park complex.
Hallmark said it’s satisfying to see the uptick in interest compared to his first few games in the 2020 season.
“I don’t think much about it when the game is going on,” he said. “I’m kind of busy. But coach (Ryan) Aguayo and I talk about it, because we’ve been here the whole time, when there weren’t many people here besides the parents. And I still think there could be more.”
The coach suggested that modest improvements to the layout of the current facility could make it attractive.
“I think the footprint of the field is wonderful,” he said as he stood in the home team dugout, looking around at the compplex. “But if we can do some stuff back here with the entry-way (into the stadium) and even over here in the arbor … where all these trees are, if we can make that a little nicer with a deck and some nicer (grand) stands, people will come out here.”
He said he thinks baseball at UTSA can be self-sustaining financially if a little more can be done to make the fans feel more comfortable.
“Baseball is not typically a revenue-generating sport,” he said. “But I was at Rice University from (2005 to 2017) and we generated revenue. There’s no reason we can’t do that here. Besides the product on the field, we need to give them a comfortable environment to sit in and watch the game in shade and all those types of things, and I think it’ll come.”
Records
Rice 17-37, 10-16
UTSA 41-11, 22-4
Coming up
Rice at UTSA, Saturday, 1 p.m. (end of the regular season)
AAC tournament, at Clearwater, Fla., Tuesday through Sunday, May 25
Notable
The Roadrunners will salute 10 athletes Saturday on Senior Day, including starters Mason Lytle, James Taussig, Andrew Stucky and Norris McClure. Also among the group are starting pitchers Braylon Owens and Conor Myles. Four others are Ty Tilson, Lorenzo Morresi, Garrett Gruell and Jake Cothran.
Ty Hodge had two hits in three at bats and drove in three runs as UTSA won its second game in two days against Rice. .- Photo by Joe Alexander