Arizona, needing to stack up wins in their last six conference games of the season to have a shot at making the Big 12 Tournament, dropped its series opener 7-4 to Houston on Friday night in Hi Corbett Field.
That loss puts Arizona (17-31, 7-18 Big 12) in 13th place, a game and a half behind Texas Tech (25-25, 8-18) who beat BYU on Friday.
“Just frustrated, I’m frustrated.” Arizona coach Chip Hale said, “I told them that we are going to play the right way until the end. I don’t care if we get into the tournament or not, I want to make sure they understand what winning baseball is and it’s not winning baseball when you’ve got a guy on third with nobody out and you can’t score, that’s just unacceptable especially when that’s been our batting practice for the last two weeks.”
Friday night starter, Owen Kramkowski, struggled against the Cougars pitching 5 1/3 innings, allowing nine hits, seven runs (six earned), with two strikeouts on 94 total pitches.
“Tough one, just Kram didn’t have his best stuff.” Hale said, “They obviously did a good job of game planning for him and got ahead and they were able to do a lot of things that we scouted and saw them do. Couldn’t really stop it, the bunting, the stealing, the squeezing, they did a really good job. Got to give them a lot of credit for that.”
Corey Kling relieved Kramkowski and held Houston scoreless through 3 2/3 innings. He allowed just four hits and struck out five.
“He did a great job, a wonderful job.” Hale said on Kling’s pitching performance.
“We’re in a situation now with Smith (Bailey) going down and (Benton) Hickman probably not being able to pitch this weekend, where our bullpen is really short.”
Bailey is out for the year with a soft tissue injury in his right shoulder and Hickman left after just two pitches in Tuesday nights win over New Mexico State with a tight bicep.
Houston (21-28, 5-20) opened up the scoring in the top of the first inning off of an RBI single from Xavier Perez.
Arizona answered back in the bottom half of the first inning after a lead-off single by Andrew Cain, Nate Novitske was gifted a base when Houston’s short stop couldn’t secure the ball as it took a weird hop and Tony Lira singled to score Cain.
Lira had two RBI’s and went 3-for-4 with two doubles and one run.
The Cougars scored a run in the second and two in the third inning to gain a 4-1 advantage headed into the bottom half of the third.
The Wildcats grabbed one back in the third when Novitske hit a lead-off single, followed by a Lira double and an RBI ground out by Beau Sylvester scored Novitske.
Houston’s last three runs came in the sixth inning putting them in front of the Wildcats 7-2.
A two-run eighth would get Arizona within three but the Wildcats couldn’t get anything going in the ninth.
“We had our chances, if we score the runs when pretty much our free RBI’s it would be 7-6 going into the ninth so that’s a disappointment.” Hale said.
Arizona and Houston return to Hi Corbett for game two at 6 p.m. Saturday with RHP Luc Fladda set to start for the Wildcats. The game can be streamed on ESPN+.
Saturday is also Senior Night for Arizona with Collin McKinney, Maddox Mihalakis, Mathis Meurant, Garret Hicks, TJ Adams, Patrick Morris, Tony Pluta, Luc Fladda, JT Drake and Dom Rodriguez expected to be recognized prior to the start of the game.
“It’s a special night for them. So we’ll do a good job of honoring them pregame, and then we’ll move on and win a ball game.” Hale said.
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