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Houston Sports: Texas teams shine in Shriners College Classic

By Dan Shedd

Houston Sports: The site of the Shriners Baseball Classic (Photo by Scott Halleran/Getty Images)
Houston Sports: The site of the Shriners Baseball Classic (Photo by Scott Halleran/Getty Images) /
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Houston Sports fans — Six Texas college baseball teams came together for a weekend of fun and a great cause in the Shriners College Classic. What happened?

What a weekend for a Houston Sports — six Texas college baseball teams came to play a three-day tournament benefiting the Shriners Hospital for Children this past weekend. Who represented at the tournament?  Baylor, Houston, Rice, Texas A&M, TCU and Texas State all came to Minute Maid Park to put on a show for local college baseball fans as well as for a great cause.

The Shriners Hospital helps children with orthopedic care, burns, cleft lip/palate and spinal cord injuries. Each team in the tournament sponsored a kid that has been treated or is being treated at Shriners:

Texas A&M came into the tourney with a 9-2 record and behind some great pitching, batting and fielding ended up sweeping the tournament by going undefeated with a 3-0 record to boot. Their wins were as follows:  the Aggies beat Baylor 5-2, TCU 1-0, especially behind this great play to close out the game:

The Aggies then defeated the Houston Cougars 3-2 to take home the tournament championship.

Let’s take a look:

The Texas State Bobcats — my alma mater — came into Houston with a 5-3 record and ended up with wins in the tournament over Rice (1-0), Houston (9-4) while losing to Baylor (5-4) .

The hometown Rice Owls under first-year coach Matt Bragga came into the tournament with a 3-6 record and ended up with a 2-1 record over the weekend with wins over Baylor (5-2) and TCU (12-2 in 7 innings) while only losing to Texas State 1-0.

The Baylor Bears came in to the tournament ranked No. 12 in the country and they finished up with a 2-1 record against all participants with losses to Texas A&M (5-2) and Rice (6-3) but beating Texas State 5-4.

In the Texas State game, they basically won the tight contest on a sensational catch by Baylor outfielder Davion Downey which is highlighted below much to the disappointment of this proud Texas State Bobcat:

The TCU Horned Frogs — who generally have a very good baseball program — came to Minute

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possessed an overall 5-2 record but fell to 1-2 on the tournament with a lone win over UH (10-6) and suffering two losses to A&M (1-0) and a 12-2 shellacking to Rice in seven innings Sunday night.

The Houston Cougars, who are at the epicenter Houston Sports, went 0-for-3 in the tournament losing all games to TCU, Texas State and Texas A&M.

The biggest surprise of the weekend for me has to be Texas State. I went to the Saturday contest against Houston with my dad and was blown away with all the Bobcat fans rivaling the amount of Houston Cougar fans.

Houston Sports fans — I wasn’t expecting much offense from the Bobcats as they didn’t really have much against Rice Friday night but they still came out on top. They took off from the jump and never gave UH a chance.

After the tournament loss to Baylor, d1baseball.com writer Kendall Rogers had some high praise for the Bobcats. He was impressed with my alma mater’s performance against schools that represented the larger conferences:

I can’t wait for next year’s tournament which should be awesome for the great cause that this event exudes.

Rogers reveals next year’s field below and it is a powerhouse lineup:

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Congrats to all participants and I’m definitely looking forward to next year!

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