CLEBURNE, Texas – The ninth-ranked and top-seeded Trinity University baseball team was upset in a 6-3 loss to #4 seed Texas Lutheran University in the opening game of the 2024 Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference baseball tournament on Friday afternoon.
The Tigers (30-11) will resume play tomorrow, but will have to win four straight games in order to win the tournament. Texas Lutheran (24-15) advances in the winner's bracket and will play the winner of this evening's second game between #2 seed Centenary College (LA) and #3 seed Southwestern University. Trinity will face the losing team tomorrow at 3:30 p.m.
Texas Lutheran jumped ahead 4-0 with a big second inning that featured four unearned runs due to an error and a passed ball by the Tiger defense. Trinity had at least one batter reach base in all nine innings, but only managed to score in the fifth on back-to-back homers from
Nicholas Lazzara (Carrollton, Texas / Jesuit College Prep) and
Cristian Holloway (Brownsville, Texas / Veterans Memorial). The Bulldogs then added two insurance runs in the ninth to account for the final tally.
Lazzara finished 2-for-4 with a double to go along with the home run. His two-run dinger broke up the shutout with one out in the fifth and Holloway followed with a round-tripper of his own to make it 4-3. That wound up being his only hit of the game, as he went 1-for-3 with a walk.
Maddox McDonald (San Antonio, Texas / Antonian) also went 2-for-4 with a double for the Tigers.
Joseph Chavana (Laredo, Texas / Alexander) took the loss to fall to 7-3 this season, giving up just four unearned runs on five hits over five-plus innings of work.
Sheppard Tyler (Austin, Texas / Anderson) threw 1.2 shutout innings in relief, striking out three batters before coming out in the sixth inning.
Up Next
Trinity will face either Centenary or Southwestern in the first elimination game of the tournament at 3:30 p.m. tomorrow afternoon. The winner of that game will play another elimination game after that to decide which team will advance to Sunday's SCAC Championship.
