Texas Tech Baseball Beats DBU for NCAA Super Regional Berth

The Texas Tech Baseball team used heroic efforts from pitchers Ryan Moseley and Hayden Howard to clinch the NCAA Lubbock Regional and move on to the NCAA Super Regional round, beating Dallas Baptist 5-3 on Monday afternoon.

The Super Regional will also be hosted by Texas Tech and will feature the East Carolina Pirates, who emerged from the Charlottesville Regional hosted by Virginia.

Texas Tech relied on the arm of Ryan Moseley early, who recovered from a lead-off single to induce a double play ground ball and strike out the third batter of a 1-2-3 inning.

Texas Tech's Stephen Smith roped a lead-off double in the bottom of the first, followed by a Hunter Hargrove sac fly and a Tanner Gardner RBI ground out for the game's first run.

DBU evened the score in the 3rd inning after Tech stranded a pair of runners in the bottom of the 2nd. The Patriots led off with a triple that was scored by a sac fly by the next batter. Moseley recovered nicely by sitting down the next two hitters in order.

In the bottom of the 3rd inning, the Red Raiders got a double from Smith, a walk from Hargrove and a walk from Tyler Neslony, bringing a run home on a balk from Patriot reliever Landon Wilson.

Tech scored again on an RBI double from Orlando Garcia in the bottom of the 4th to take a 3-1 lead into the 5th inning.

Moseley would get the first out of the inning before being relieved by Hayden Howard after a one-out walk. Howard outed the next two batters.

That's when the game got interesting.

A 1-2-3 inning for the Red Raiders' bats brought DBU up in the top of the 6th, where Austin Listi evened the score at three a piece with a two-run blast to left field. Howard got out of the inning without any further damage.

In the bottom of the 6th, the Red Raiders would fire back. After a walk from Gutierrez and a single from Michael Davis, Garcia smoked a double into the gap in left center plating both runners and pushing the lead back to two.

That's all Howard needed to finish the game, using that now infamous pick-off move -- the same move that ended the New Mexico game --to get out of a two-on-two out jam in the 7th inning. He faced four batters in the 8th and 3 in the 9th for the 4.2 inning save.