Texas A&M Comes Up Clutch in Walk-Off Win Over Penn

If you came to Blue Bell Park Friday night looking for an offensive showdown, you picked the wrong game to attend, but if you came to the park looking for a game that came down to literally the very last play, then do we have a contest for you.

The No. 24 Texas A&M Aggies continued their unbeaten start to the season with a walk-off 1-0 win over the Penn Quakers Friday night after a Boston Kellner fly ball was poorly misjudged by Quakers center fielder Ryan Taylor, sailing over his head as Sawyer Farr easily rounded third and touched home in the bottom of the ninth.

The Maroon and White secured seven hits en route to their fifth straight win to start the 2026 season. Not the best night at the plate, but enough to put another tally in the win column.

Olsen Magic Strikes Again

Texas A&M pitcher Shane Sdao (38) throws a pitch during the first inning against Oregon at Olsen Field, Blue Bell Park | Maria Lysaker-Imagn Images

Not many inside Blue Bell Park's walls came into the game expecting a professional-level pitcher's duel between Texas A&M's Shane Sdao and Penn's Jake Moss, but that is exactly what they received Friday night.

It was as if Tarik Skubal and Paul Skenes had reverted back to their collegiate selves and were on opposing sides.

Sdao came out of the gate hot, fanning six batters in the first three innings and didn't allow a hit until the fourth inning, eventually ending the night with seven innings of work, seven strikeouts, and only three hits allowed.

After allowing a hit to start the eighth inning, Sdao was pulled and Ethan Darden would come in to strikeout two batters in his lone inning of work, before Josh Stewart was called in to keep the game scoreless in the top of the ninth, which is exactly what he accomplished.

Needing a spark of Olsen Magic to get the one run necessary to take the first game, Aggies catcher Bear Harrison turned an 0-2 count into a walk and was replaced on the basepath by Sawyer Farr.

After a sacrifice bunt from Travis Chestnut moved Farr up 90 feet, Kellner came up and delivered at the expense of Taylor, as the ball dropped a solid five feet behind him and rolled all the way to the center field wall, giving Farr more than enough time to round third and touch home for the lone run of the game.

"I just tried to keep calm up at the plate and tell myself that it was just another at-bat," Kellner said during his postgame press conference. "Once I hit it, I knew that I had hit it pretty well, and then once I saw it go over, I made sure that Sawyer (Farr) touched home first before I started going crazy. That was a really cool moment."

Kellner's first collegiate walk-off hit rounds up a successful first week for the A&M freshman, who swatted his first home run during Tuesday night's win over Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and put four doubles in the outfield gaps during the opening series against the Tennessee Tech Golden Eagles last weekend.

Texas A&M head coach Michael Earley knew that Kellner was capable of making the necessary decisions at the plate during the situation, saying that he was even elated that the freshman was standing in the box during that moment.

"When he came up to bat, I felt really good," Earley said after the game. "When he's up in that moment, there's no part of me that goes, 'Ah, we got a freshman up' or anything like that. I was glad he was up to bat."

Texas A&M head baseball coach Michael Earley had no doubts that Boston Kellner was capable of coming up big during Texas A&M’s 1-0 win over Penn.

“I was glad he was up to bat,” the head coach said. pic.twitter.com/mGKKEWSHnz
— Aaron Raley (@AJRaley03) February 21, 2026

The Aggies and Quakers meet for Game 2 of the series tomorrow afternoon at 2:00 PM.