Vanderbilt blanked No. 4 Texas 6-0 on Saturday night at Hawkins Field, answering an early Longhorns surge in the series with a fast start of its own and forcing a rubber game on Sunday.
The Commodores scored five of their six runs in the first three innings, opening with a three-run first and adding two more in the third before tacking on an insurance run in the seventh. The win evened the three-game set and gave Vanderbilt a result it badly needed against a Texas team that entered at 31-9 and 12-7 in the SEC.
Aiden Stillman set the tone for Vanderbilt baseball by working the first 3 2/3 innings and striking out six, before Luke Guth covered 2 1/3 scoreless innings in relief to earn the win. Tyler Baird then finished a nine-out save as Vanderbilt’s pitchers combined for 14 strikeouts in the shutout.
Texas starter Ruger Riojas took the loss after allowing five runs on eight hits in three innings. Thomas Burns gave the Longhorns a steadier stretch out of the bullpen, throwing 3 1/3 innings of one-run baseball and striking out a season-best five batters, but the deficit was already too deep.
The result mattered because Texas had scored 11 runs in Friday’s opener before Vanderbilt turned around and blanked the Longhorns a night later. Vanderbilt entered the game 26-18 and 10-10 in SEC play, and the shutout showed how quickly the tone of a weekend series can change when a home staff controls the game from the first inning on.
The teams were set to meet again at noon Sunday at Hawkins Field, with the series hanging on one last game after Vanderbilt evened it under the lights.
