NCAA BASEBALL: Clemens belts pair in Texas’ rout of A&M
Published 11:56 pm Saturday, June 2, 2018
AUSTIN (AP) — Kody Clemens homered twice, Nolan Kingham pitched into the eighth inning and Texas beat Texas A&M 8-3 on Saturday night to stay undefeated in the NCAA Austin Regional.
Clemens hit a three-run homer in the top of the first to put the Longhorns (39-20) ahead to stay before the game’s first out. The second baseman, the Big 12 player of the year and son of seven-time Cy Young Award winner Roger Clemens, went deep again leading off the sixth for his 21st homer of the season.
Texas A&M (40-21), which had won 10 consecutive NCAA regional games since 2015, faces Indiana (39-18) in an elimination game today. The winner of that game plays the Longhorns later that night.
Kingham (8-3) struck out eight and walked one while allowing three runs, one of them unearned. Aggies starter Mitchell Kilkenny (8-5) was tagged for five runs in four innings with five strikeouts.
David Hamilton had three hits and scored twice for Texas, including an RBI single. DJ Petrinsky homered in his second consecutive game.
The Aggies, now in the SEC, won the regular season meeting of the former Big 12 and Southwest Conference rivals. Their last postseason matchup had been four years ago, when the Longhorns beat A&M to clinch the regional at Rice and eventually made the College World Series.
Texas A&M went to Omaha last season.