ABILENE - Abilene Christian baseball put runners in scoring position several times through Sunday's series finale at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, but the Wildcats never received the big they needed and the Islanders coasted to an 8-1 Southland Conference win at Chapman Field.
A&M-Corpus Christi scored all its runs between the third and fifth innings, with four coming against starter
Thomas Altimont (all unearned) and the rest off reliever
Nate Cole.
Altimont retired the first batter he faced in the third but ended up walking the Islanders' leadoff hitter Jordan Lee and plunking their No. 2 hitter Casey Thomas.
Thomas Ware then grounded a ball to short that was misplayed by
Kyle Carroll, which allowed each of the runners to move up two bases. Altimont walked another batter to load the bases, and with two outs he hit his second batter of the inning to make it a 2-0 game. Brett Burner followed with a big two-run single to left to push the home team's advantage to 4-1.
ACU scored its lone run the following inning when
Marcelle Carter raced home from second base on a RBI single by
Alex Copeland. Carter began the frame with a base hit up the middle and advanced to second on a wild pitch by starter Devin Skapura, who struck out five in as many innings pitched.
Skapura would allow one more single in the fifth before turning the game over to his bullpen, which scattered just two hits over the final four innings with three strikeouts.
ACU's last true scoring chance came in the eighth inning when they put runners at the corners on a two-out hit by pitch and single, but reliever Nolan Holland was able to escape the jam with a ground ball to second base.
Kaleb Keith pitched the ninth for Corpus and retired the side in order on three more grounds outs.
The Islanders put the game largely out of reach in the fifth as they started with four-straight base hits, including run-scoring doubles by Kyle Danford and Justin Perales and a RBI single from No. 9 batter Cody Clarke.
The Wildcats return to action Tuesday for the game two of their three-game season series with Texas Tech. First pitch is 6:30 p.m. at Crutcher Scott Field.
