TCU Baseball Falls To West Virginia
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OKLAHOMA CITY – TCU found itself in a 4-0 hole after two innings and never recovered as West Virginia handed the Horned Frogs a 10-2 loss Friday night. The nine errors led to seven unearned runs.
West Virginia staked itself to a 2-0 lead in the top of the first, taking advantage of a TCU miscue. Billy Fleming got the Mountaineers going with a one-out double. Jacob Rice followed with a single to put runners on the corners. An error allowed the first run to score and another ground out gave West Virginia a lead it would never relinquish.
Two more runs crossed the plate for the Mountaineers in the second as the lead grew to four. The big blow was a two-out, two-run single by Rice.
The Mountaineers threatened once again in the fifth as they loaded the bases with one out. Two hit batters and a bunt single had West Virginia bidding to break the game open. Trey Teakell got the job done as he struck out Matt Frazer for the second out, then got a ground out to leave the bases loaded.
TCU finally cracked the scoreboard in the fifth inning, cutting the deficit to three, 4-1. Keaton Jones led off the frame with a triple to left center. Kyle Bacak battled through an eight-pitch at-bat, eventually
grounding out to third to drive in the Frogs first run of the game.
West Virginia answered with the help of the Horned Frogs as they committed two errors, issued three walks and hit a batter to give the Mountaineers three runs. Back-to-back errors to open the inning had two in scoring position. Two straight walks followed to push across the first run of the inning. A base hit and a double play ball drove in two more.
Paul Hendrix got one of the runs back in the bottom of the inning as he launched his fifth home run of the season over the left field fence to make it a 7-2 contest.
Three more TCU errors with two outs in the seventh inning allowed three Mountaineer runners to cross the plate to open up a 10-2 lead. Tejay Antone retired the first two batters of the inning before a hit batter started the parade of hitters to the plate. The only hit in the inning was a bases-loaded two-run double by Ryan McBroom.
The Frogs pushed across a run in the bottom of the eighth to account for the final scored. Josh Gonzales hit a pinch-hit double and scored on a double off the bat of Witte.
The loss drops TCU to 29-27 overall and 1-1 in pool play at the Championships. The Frogs still have a chance to advance to the championship game on Sunday, but will need to defeat Kansas Saturday night and hope for a West Virginia loss in the game prior to theirs. Game time is set for 7:30 p.m. and can be seen on Fox College Sports.
