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SAN ANTONIO — Down one run and down to their final three outs, No. 11 St. Mary's Baseball began to kick into gear Saturday afternoon.
Billy Richard singled and quickly stole second. Then came a
Mario Maldonado single, putting runners on the corners with just one away.
A classic Rattler Comeback seemed in store.
But the Rattlers' rally ended abruptly, as St. Edward's turned a game-ending double play to win 2-1 in the Heartland Conference championship game at Incarnate Word's Sullivan Field.
St. Edward's (38-15) took the Heartland postseason title, ending the Rattlers' (37-15) bid to win their fourth straight Heartland Tournament championship.
With the victory, the Hilltoppers earn the conference's automatic bid to the NCAA Division II South Central Regional, while the Rattlers, the Heartland regular-season champs, will be left to wait for Sunday's Selection Show to see if they earn an at-large bid.
Having entered the weekend as the No. 3 seed in the region, odds are good that the committee will pick the Rattlers as one of the six teams to advance to the regional. Still, StMU didn't want to leave things to chance.
After falling to the loser's bracket with a 14-6 loss to St. Edward's on Friday, St. Mary's stormed back with a 9-3 victory over Texas A&M International in an elimination game early Saturday afternoon. The triumph landed the Rattlers in the championship game, where they needed to pull off two victories over the Hilltoppers to claim the title.
But it wasn't meant to be.
Derek Moczygemba scattered seven hits and two runs in eight innings, striking out five in the process to leave St. Mary's with a prime opportunity to force a Game 2 in the championship round. But after taking a 1-0 run in the first on an
Ivan Sigala RBI, the Rattlers wouldn't score again. St. Edward's evened up the score in the third and tacked on another run in the fourth, which was all it needed on this day.
Moczygemba,
Rene Solis (Jr., San Antonio),
Brandon Bates (Sr., Boerne, Texas) and
Al Gonzalez (RS-Fr., Pasadena, Texas) earned All-Tournament honors, while St. Edward's Taylor Johnson took home MVP honors.
Earlier in the day,
Carl O'Neal earned the victory over TAMIU to improve to 12-2 on the season. Gonzalez led the way at the plate, going 2 for 5 with three RBIs and two runs scored.
St. Mary's University, as a Catholic Marianist University, fosters the formation of people in faith and educates leaders for the common good through community service, integrated liberal arts and professional education, and academic excellence. The University has six athletic national titles: men's basketball (1989–NAIA), baseball (2001–NCAA Div. II), softball (1986–NAIA and 2002–NCAA Div. II) and an individual national champion in men's golf (2006–NCAA Div. II) and a national academic championship in men's golf (2009–NCAA Div. II). St. Mary's also had more than 40 percent of its athletes named to conference, regional and/or national honor rolls this past year. St. Mary's student–athletes graduation rate is 65 percent, higher than the NCAA Division II average of 55 percent. To learn more about St. Mary's, visit www.rattlerathletics.com.
