CLEBURNE, Texas – The ninth-ranked and top-seeded Trinity baseball team defeated #3 seed Southwestern University 8-4 to stay alive at the 2024 Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference Tournament on Saturday evening.

The Tigers (31-11) eliminated the Pirates (23-19) from contention for this year's SCAC Championship, as both teams opened the weekend with losses on Friday. Trinity advances to take on Centenary College (LA) in another elimination game. That game was scheduled to be played Saturday night, but weather in the area forced the game to be postponed until Sunday at 12:00 p.m. Trinity has now won three of four meetings with Southwestern this season.

Trinity starter Jackson Teer (San Antonio, Texas / Johnson) was rudely greeted by Southwestern to start this game, as the Pirates touched him up for three runs on four hits in the top of the first inning. The Tigers got back two of those runs in the bottom of the inning as Nicholas Lazzara (Carrollton, Texas / Jesuit College Prep) and Colt Harris (Katy, Texas / Houston Christian) drove in runs to keep the game close.

The Tigers then tied the game on an error in the bottom of the second, and Teer settled in for a quality outing that resulted in him improving to 8-1 this season. After giving up four hits in the first inning, he allowed just three more over his next six innings of work. Teer came out of the game prior to the eighth inning, which was also when the game went into a rain delay that lasted nearly 45 minutes. He finished with nine strikeouts in 7.0 innings.

The offense gave Trinity its first lead with a big fourth inning. After the first two batters were retired, the Tigers staged a two-out rally that resulted in a four-run inning, and an 7-3 lead. The first run came in on another Southwestern error, then Kai Tinker (Simi Valley, Calif. / Grace Brethren) drew a bases-loaded walk to make it 5-3. Mattias Rytting (Houston, Texas / Bellaire) followed that with a clutch two-RBI single to finish off the scoring.

Though Southwestern got one of the runs back in the top of the fifth to make it 7-4, Harris cracked an RBI double in the bottom of the inning to take the lead back to four runs at 8-4. The Pirates had runners on in the next two innings, but couldn't cut into the lead. Then came the rain delay after the end of the seventh inning.

After the game resumed, Southwestern drew back-to-back walks with one out in the eighth to make another bid to get back into the game; however, Tiger closer Will Hellings (Summit, N.J. / Summit) came out of the bullpen with other ideas. Hellings struck out the next two batters to end the eighth, then got three quick outs in the ninth and the game was over almost as fast it was restarted.

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Trinity and Centenary were able to get started before officials halted the game, but the teams didn't get out of the first inning. The Gents scored three runs in the bottom of the first and will still be batting when the game resumes tomorrow at 12:00 p.m.