Texas Baseball Blanks Rice 4-0
HOUSTON, Texas – pitched six shutout innings and a pair of Longhorn freshmen homered, as Texas Baseball blanked Rice 4-0 on Saturday at Reckling Park. The win secures the first series win of the season for the Longhorns and sets up an opportunity to go for the sweep on Sunday.
Madden was solid for six innings and struck out seven batters in his season debut. He finished the day with back-to-back perfect innings in the fifth and sixth.
Freshmen and finished off the Owls for the final three innings. Hansen pitched two scoreless innings with two strikeouts and Duplantier logged a perfect ninth with one strikeout.
A pair of freshmen hitters, and , notched the first hits of their career with solo homers. This comes a day after freshman homered for his first career hit.
Texas scratched out a run in the top of the first, with lining an RBI single to center to drive in . Hodo III gave the Longhorns a 2-0 lead with his solo homer to lead off the top of the second.
Rice threatened in the third inning but freshman catcher threw out a potential base stealer and Madden got a strikeout to end the inning with no damage done.
In the fourth the Longhorns' defense kept Rice off the board, throwing out a runner at the plate to end the inning. Kennedy fielded a double in left field and threw to Faltine, who gunned down the runner at the plate.
Two innings later, Faltine added a run to the Texas lead with a two-out RBI single to drive in Kennedy.
Dixon provided the exclamation point with his solo home run in the top of the ninth to extend the Texas lead to 4-0.
UP NEXT
Texas will go for the series sweep on Sunday at 1 p.m. with getting the start on the mound.
