Late-Inning Collapse Dooms Texas A&M Baseball In Opener vs. Missouri

And the team seemed to have the opening game in the bag early on, especially when the team's offense opened up with a line drive homer off the bat of Jace LaViolette, his 16th of the year.

"Lord Tubbington" wasn't finished there, though. His next at-bat in the third inning saw the exact same results, only this one was launched over 430 feet to straightaway center field, giving the Aggies a 2-1 lead.

LaViolette was immediately followed up by Wyatt Henseler, who sent his 11th homer of the season over the left field wall the following at-bat to increase the lead to 3-1, which was furthered later that inning by a three-run homer off the bat of Blake Binderup, securing a 6-1 A&M lead after the third inning.

But that's where the scoring stopped for the Aggies, and where the fatal mistakes began.

Missouri's Jackson Lovich helped cut into the Aggie lead with a two-run homer that made it 6-3 Aggies after the fifth inning, where the score would remain until the ninth inning.

To say things fell apart for the Aggies in the ninth inning would be the understatement of the year.

After relieving Ryan Prager with back-to-back perfect innings in the seventh and eighth innings, Weston Moss would give up a base hit to Keegan Knutson.

After allowing a walk to catcher Jedier Hernandez and hitting Gehrig Goldbeck with a pitch, Moss quickly found himself in a bases-loaded jam, and was relieved himself by lefty Kaiden Wilson with no outs.

The 12th Man hoped for limited damage given the situation, and were instead given a full-blown wreck by the Maroon and White.

Lovich would score a run on an RBI single, Kaden Peer would knock in two runs to tie the game, and after loading up the bases yet again, the Tigers would plate two more runs after Kaeden Kent bobbled a hard-hit ground ball and then airmailed the throw home to Bear Harrison, giving the Tigers their first lead of the night.

A wild pitch by Wilson would bring home Tyler Macon, the Aggies going from a three-run lead to a three-run hole in what seemed like a flash.

The home crowd at Blue Bell tried to rally the team on, but Wyatt Henseler would ground out and Caden Sorrell and Bear Harrison would both fly out to seal the game and bump the Aggies down to 10-15 against SEC teams.

Aggies fans can most likely understand why the team would struggle in Austin against one of the best teams in the country, but losing an opening game to a team that was looking for their first conference win after putting up incredible efforts against top two ranked teams in the past month is sure to leave the 12th Man stricken with confusion.

As they fight to keep their playoff hopes alive, the Aggies will be right back at Blue Bell Park Saturday afternoon at 2:00 PM for game two of their final home series.

Where fans will hope that the team puts together a full nine innings of solid baseball, instead of the eight they were given Friday night.