Tulane Green Wave Baseball Faces Daunting Challenge Against UTSA
In their first matchup of the 2025 American Athletic Conference baseball tournament, the Tulane Green Wave beat the Florida Atlantic Owls, 6-3. Now, the challenge gets tougher.
Following that impressive win, Tulane, the No. 5 seed, faces the tournament's No. 1 one seed of the AAC tournament, the UTSA Roadrunners.
Against the Owls, pitcher Michael Lombardi turned in an epic performance. He struck out 11 batters and yielded only one run in seven innings. Despite a ninth-inning comeback attempt from the Owls, Tulane's bats supplied the Wave with enough of a cushion to hold onto its lead.
The Tulane-UTSA matchup starts at noon central on Thursday. Luc Fladda is expected to get the start for Tulane.
If the Green Wave cannot beat the Roadrunners, they will still live to play another day. The tournament is double elimination. If Tulane loses, it will face FAU again on Friday. If Tulane wins it advances to a semifinal game on Saturday and gets a day off.
Now, the Green Wave faces a Roadrunner team that got a leg up on them in their series meeting.
In the regular season, UTSA won the series, 2-1. Tulane won Game 2 of the series, 5-3, while UTSA won Games 1 and 3 in a more decisive fashion, winning 13-5 and 25-7, respectively.
The Roadrunners are led by outfielder Mason Lytle, who is batting .377 on the season with eight home runs. Outfielder Drew Detlefsen is the team's primary power hitter, hitting 13 home runs while still batting .322.
UTSA's success this season has been in large part due to their remarkable hitting. The Roadrunners have five players who hit over .330 that have played in more than 40 games this year. UTSA also has no problem hitting for power, recording 62 home runs on the season.
What makes this matchup so interesting is that Tulane has proven to be an unstoppable force in the AAC tournament, winning back-to-back tournament championships. But the Roadrunners have had a dominant season with a 43-11 overall record while going 23-4 in conference play.
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Austin Levin is a rising Junior and English Major at Tulane University. Austin was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia. He has experience writing for Tulane's baseball twitter and articles for basketball and golf for his high school's Sports Information Department. He won the Voice of the Saints Award in high school for his work in their Sports Information Department, was awarded the Hampden-Sydney Book Award for his outstanding effort in high school, and has made the Dean's List twice. Austin is a Cleveland Cavaliers and Atlanta Falcons fan. His favorite athletes are Julio Jones, Donovan Mitchell, and Rory Mcilroy.