Baseball Sports

UH cruises to series sweep over TSU for perfect season start

Junior Ryan Hernandez crushes a ball over the left-field wall in UH baseball team's season opener against TSU. | Andy Yanez/The Cougar

Junior Ryan Hernandez crushes a ball over the left-field wall in UH baseball team’s season opener against TSU. | Andy Yanez/The Cougar

The Houston bats were smoking hot Sunday afternoon as the Cougars cruised to a 14-4 win over Texas Southern to sweep the Tigers in the three-game weekend series.

The UH baseball team quickly jumped on top as junior first baseman Ryan Hernandez drove in sophomore outfielder Brandon Uhse on a groundout to put the Cougars up 1-0 in the bottom of the first inning.

Sophomore infielder Ian McMillan put the Cougars up 2-0 with a sacrifice fly in the bottom of the second inning.

The Cougars did most of their damage in the bottom of the third inning. With one out and a runner on second, junior outfielder Steven Rivas hit a 460-foot bomb to right field to double UH’s lead to 4-0.

A few batters later, McMillan came to the plate with the bases loaded and broke the game open with one swing of the bat, sending the ball over the left field wall for a grand slam.

TSU cut the UH lead to 9-4 after scoring runs in the fifth, sixth and seventh innings, but the Cougars did not allow the Tigers to inch any closer as they added five runs over the course of the bottom of the seventh and eighth innings to secure a 14-4 victory and the series sweep to improve to 3-0 on the season.

Sophomore right-handed pitcher Blake Schultz earned the win, throwing 4 and 1/3 innings of one run, three strikeout baseball.

After the game, UH baseball head coach Todd Whitting met with reporters on Zoom and expressed how happy he was with his team’s performance, both on the mound and at the plate, to open up the season, giving them an A-plus.

“I thought we competed really well all weekend,” Whitting said. “Overall, you can’t play a whole lot better.”

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