A&M drops pitchers' duel in renewal of rivalry at No. 1 Texas, 2-1

Game #41: No. 1 Texas 2, Texas A&M 1
Records: Texas A&M (24-17, 8-11), Texas (35-5, 17-2)
WP: Ruger Riojas (8-1)
LP: Ryan Prager (2-3)
Save: Dylan Volantis (10)
Box Score

AUSTIN — We're often reminded how thin the margins are in the SEC.

Once more, they were razor-thin on Friday night in Austin.

In the first of a three-game Lone Star Showdown series, Texas A&M dropped a 2-1 decision to top-ranked Texas in front of 7,942 at UFCU Disch-Falk Stadium.

"We're going to be in a dog fight for three days," Aggie skipper Michael Earley said. "We've just got to re-group after today, come back out and even this thing out tomorrow."

How fine was the margin in the opener? The answer: One pitch.

A well-pitched affair, a Weston Moss offering that Tommy Farmer IV hit into the left-field bullpen served as the decisive run.

Farmer's first collegiate home run staked Texas to a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the seventh.

An unlikely source of offense, Farmer joined nine-hitter Jayden Duplantier as the only Longhorns to drive in a run.

"The effort was huge. I thought we played pretty good baseball," Earley said. "They pitched really well. I thought we had good at-bats. They kept us off balance a little bit. We pitched really well. I thought, in the end, they just beat us."

Duplantier's RBI double off Ryan Prager in the third was the only run Texas scratched across vs. the Aggie ace.

Indeed, the left-hander looked more true to form, competing through 5.2 innings while keeping his club in the contest.

"I don't know if I could put a full grade on it because I think part of the stuff is the competitiveness," Prager said. "I thought that was really good. Not letting the one in the third dictate the rest of the outing and just being able to keep going and truly going one-pitch-at-a-time."

Beyond him, Moss surrendered the lone run in one inning of work on just 25 pitches before left-hander Kaiden Wilson got the final four outs for the Aggie bullpen.

However, Prager was out-dueled by right-hander Ruger Riojas, who used a four-pitch mix to carve up A&M, hitting across his 5.2 scoreless innings before Max Grubbs and Dylan Volantis were deployed to secure a nail-biting Longhorn victory.

"As the game went on, we got a little better off (Riojas)," Earley said. "Off the left, I thought we started to put together some really good at-bats. Volantis has been lights out all season, so it was good to get him in there, see him, make him throw some pitches."

A&M's only marker came when Kimble Schuessler dropped a high infield pop-up off the bat of Wyatt Henseler. The error allowed Ben Royo to score from second and cut the deficit in half.

Jamie Maury

Ben Royo logged the first four-hit game of his career and his seventh multi-hit contest of the season.

Royo finished 4-for-4, had half of A&M's hits and its only extra-base hit in the losing effort.

"I think we put good swings on it. It just didn't drop for us tonight," Royo said. "It was a super-competitive game, down to the very end. It's a series for a reason."

Against Volantis, the Aggies got the tying run into scoring position in both the eighth and ninth innings, but never found the timely hit as the left-handed reliever struck out five on 40 pitches in a five-out save.

Once more: The margin was a single pitch.

"This is a three-day thing," Earley reiterated. "It's good to see guys like that. We didn't get the result we wanted, but I'm glad our guys got to see (Volantis). We've got to keep fighting."

Ball games such as Fridays are common in the nation's best college baseball league.

And even though they're battling in yet another hostile environment, the Aggies have shown the propensity to fight back in both Knoxville and Fayetteville in recent weeks.

They must do so yet again when the showdown continues on Saturday at 3 p.m. CT.