ABILENE – On the surface, there was nothing remarkable about ACU's 9-0 win Saturday night over Houston Baptist in Southland Conference baseball action at Crutcher Scott Field.
The Wildcats collected 15 hits (14 singles) against four HBU pitchers and rode the left arm of senior
Aaron Mason to their third shutout victory of the season.
Beyond the surface numbers, though, were these facts about Saturday evening's win:
• The Wildcats collected 15 hits, their highest total of the season against an NCAA Division I opponents and the second-highest total for the program in a game against an NCAA Division I opponent behind the 19 hits they had in a 13-12 win over Alabama A&M on March 22, 2014;
• The 9-0 win is the largest margin of shutout victory against an NCAA Division I opponent since ACU began its transition from NCAA Division II to NCAA Division I in 2013-14;
• The nine-run margin of victory is tied for the largest margin of victory over an NCAA Division I opponent, along with a 10-1 win over New Jersey Tech on Feb. 22, 2014
But a deeper look reveals it's one of the most dominant victories of the Wildcats' short tenure at the NCAA Division I level. The most important thing for the Wildcats, obviously, was that they bounced back from a 3-2 loss in Friday's series-opener and came up with a conference victory.
Senior lefthander
Aaron Mason led the way by tossing the first complete-game shutout of his career. Mason delivered 113 pitches and worked out of a pair of early jams to keep the Huskies off the board. He gave up just four hits – including a leadoff triple in the third and a leadoff double in the fourth – en route to becoming the fourth ACU pitcher in the last three seasons to deliver a complete-game shutout against a Southland Conference opponent.
Mason's current teammate,
Garrett deMeyere, was the first Wildcat to throw a complete-game shutout as an NCAA Division I program when he did so on April 19, 2014, in a 3-0 win over Stephen F. Austin. Brady Rodriguez did it later that season when he blanked Oral Roberts, 7-0, on just three hits. And last year,
Thomas Altimont went the distance in a 3-0 shutout win over McNeese State.
ACU took a 1-0 lead in the second inning on an RBI single by freshman shortstop
Mark Pearson and added three more runs in the fifth inning with two runs coming in on a two-run single by
Braxton Wilks. The Wildcats pushed their lead to 7-0 in the sixth without the benefit of an RBI hit.
Pearson scored on a wild pitch by reliever Brody Toal, and then
Hunter Markwardt and
Willie Harris scored on a throwing error by shortstop Louie Payetta on a ground ball hit by
Russell Crippen that should have ended the inning.
ACU tacked on two more runs in the bottom of the seventh on a two-run triple by Markwardt, who was 3 for 4 with two RBI Saturday night after a 3 for 4 night in Friday's series-opener.
The Wildcats (11-18 overall and 3-8 in the Southland) will conclude their three-game series against HBU (15-15 and 6-5) at 1 p.m. Sunday before heading to College Station Tuesday evening to take on No. 1 Texas A&M at Blue Bell Park.
