COLLEGE STATION — The No. 2 Vanderbilt Commodores overcame the No. 22 Texas A&M Aggies for their first win in Southeastern Conference play Friday night at Olsen Field at Blue Bell park.
The Commodores hit 7-of-21 with runners on base while Texas A&M was 2-of-17. Vanderbilt also took advantage of two errors in the top half of the sixth inning and scored three runs as a result, which were the deciding factor in the game.
“We have to pitch and play defense at a high level,” said Texas A&M coach Rob Childress. “That’s been the recipe for us thus far this season. Tonight [John] Doxakis worked his tail off.”
Doxakis allowed two runs on six hits and two walks while striking out six over 5.0 innings of work. However, he was shouldered with the loss and is now 3-2 on the season.
“They made it hard to be successful today, and that’s what good teams will do to you, but you have to bounce back better than that,” said Doxakis. “We waited too long to get it going. They didn’t miss fastballs, if we were throwing them over the plate they were going to barrell it up, and that made it really hard to pitch, and not having secondary stuff made it harder to pitch. It was just a channel of events, and it didn’t go our way.”
The Aggies drop to 15-5 on the season with a 0-1 mark in SEC play while Vandy is 15-3 and 1-0 in conference action.
“As bad as we played we still had our opportunities,” said Childress. “Give Vanderbilt credit, we made a run at them and they come right back with a couple two out big hits to extend the lead. They played a lot better than we did tonight.”
Game two is set for Saturday with a 2:02 p.m. first pitch.