Texas Tech baseball drops weekend series to Texas

Unfortunately, the Texas Tech baseball team was unable to make one final stand against Texas in Lubbock this weekend dropping two of three games to the Longhorns at Rip Griffin Park. It continued a disappointing trend of Texas Tech teams not performing well against Texas during the 2023-24 academic year.

Friday night, the Horns scored a dominating 22-8 win to open the series. With the game knotted at 4-4 in the top of the 4th, UT broke things open with seven runs off of Tech starter Kyle Robinson. Making matters all the more difficult to swallow was the fact that all of Texas' runs scored with two outs in the inning. Then, in the top of the fifth inning, the Horns managed to tack on five more runs to put things completely out of reach.

That was a disappointing turn after Tech had scored four unanswered runs to tie the game after Texas opened with four in the top of the first. If there were any positives from Friday night, they would have been the homers from Austin Green, Damian Bravo, and Will Burns.

On Saturday, Texas Tech rebounded with a 7-2 win. The star of the show that day was freshman starter Mac Heuer who tossed six complete innings allowing only two solo homers while striking out eight and walking only one.

At the plate, Dylan Maxey launched his first long ball of the year as part of a 4-RBI day. Also, Gavin Kash knocked in two crucial runs with a double down the third-base line.

Sunday gave us the best game of the series. Unfortunately, it was one that Tech let slip away.

In the 9-7 Texas win, Tech actually had leads of 3-0, 4-2, and 6-3 but each time, the Horns had an answer. The big inning for the visitors was the top of the sixth when they took the lead for good with three runs.

The Red Raiders were partially undone by two critical errors. In fact, two UT unearned runs would prove to be the difference in the game.

Perhaps the pressure of hosting or playing Texas for the final time as Big 12 foes was too heavy for Texas Tech sports teams to handle this year. The Red Raider football team was walloped in Austin 57-7 by the Longhorns in the last meeting between the programs as conference foes.

Then, just last month, the Red Raider basketball team played its worst game of the year when hosting Texas for the final time. Despite handling Texas in Austin by 11 points to open Big 12 play, the Red Raiders were overwhelmed in Lubbock 81-69.

Now, the Texas Tech baseball team has dropped this weekend's final home series against UT two games to one. Perhaps this just wasn't Tech's year when competing against the Horns or perhaps the Red Raider teams put too much pressure on themselves when trying to provide what they knew the people of Lubbock desperately wanted. But whatever the reason, the Red Raiders certainly didn't send Texas out of the South Plains and the Big 12 the way we all hoped they would.