Lucas Gordon's career outing helps Texas advance past TCU in 5-3 Big 12 tournament win
Most of the heroes on Texas’ 2022 squad wield a bat. Ivan Melendez, Murphy Stehly, Eric Kennedy, Douglas Hodo, and Skyler Messinger have paced the Longhorns’ record-breaking efforts at the plate, often carrying a pitching staff whose night-to-night performance from anyone not named Pete Hansen can be described as erratic at best. In recent weeks, however, Lucas Gordon has emerged to join Hansen in the small company of pitchers Longhorn head coach David Pierce can deem reliable.
[Get a FREE 7-day trial of Inside Texas Plus!]
On Thursday, Gordon was more than just reliable against TCU, the Big 12 regular season champion; he was magnificent. Gordon surrendered two runs, one earned, on two hits and two walks with one hit batter over 7.2 innings versus the No. 1-seeded Horned Frogs. He pitched until leg cramps forced him to exit the ballgame with a 2-2 count and two outs in the eighth. Eventually, Tristan Stevens finished the eighth inning and closed out the ninth to save Gordon’s winning effort and advance Texas in the Big 12 tournament.
TCU was unable to manufacture much of anything versus Gordon. While he was in the game, there was never more than one runner on the base paths. Horned Frog leadoff hitter Elijah Nunez recorded the only extra-base hit surrendered by Gordon, a leadoff double in the sixth.
Gordon’s pitching didn’t overpower Horned Frog hitters, but he consistently was able to retire the entire TCU lineup. He recorded 13 fly ball outs in Thursday’s game compared to five groundouts and four strikeouts. He surrendered one run in the fourth and another in the sixth. In the seventh, he hit the first batter he faced before retiring the next three hitters without additional issue.
Texas scored all the runs Gordon would require in the first when Stehly clubbed a three-run home run over the left field fence. In the eighth inning, the potent Texas offense offered more support with two more runs. One was courtesy of a controversial balk call which resulted in TCU head coach Kirk Sarloos’ mistaken ejection. The other was an RBI single off the bat of Austin Todd. Gordon returned to the mound for the bottom of the eighth, but he started suffering from leg cramps in his legs during his mid-inning warmup pitches.
He remained in the game after a visit from the trainer, retired the first two batters of the inning, and even reached a 2-2 count against the third Horned Frog batter of the frame. But after a career-high 108 pitches, his body couldn’t muster another toss. He was pulled from the game to a chorus of cheers from the Texas faithful in attendance.
It was the performance of Gordon’s career. After being thrust into the starting rotation in mid-March, Gordon withstood some figurative bumps and bruises when learning to go through lineups for the second and third time over. Through the course of conference play, he gained more and more confidence and even slid into the No. 2 starter role. His efforts throughout the year were critical in helping stabilize an erratic pitching staff. The Longhorns lost only one of his Big 12 starts.
His work at Globe Life Field was the crescendo to a month of May where he surrendered four earned runs in four Big 12 games.
Luke Harrison replaced Gordon in the eighth, but couldn’t retire the batter he was called upon to face, issuing a walk. He then surrendered a single, bringing the tying run to the plate for TCU.
Pierce called upon Stevens to work back-to-back days, but the outing from the Longhorn staff’s elder statesman began with some trouble. He walked the first batter he faced to load the bases and bring the go-ahead run to the plate. Stevens then worked a 1-2 count against TCU designated hitter Bobby Goodloe before striking him out to quash the biggest Horned Frog threat of the game.
Stevens gave up a two-out solo homer to Gray Rodgers in the ninth to make it a 5-3 contest, but he retired the following hitter to send Texas to Saturday, awaiting the winner of a Friday contest between Oklahoma State and TCU.
The win bolstered the Longhorns’ growing candidacy to be selected as a regional host in the NCAA tournament. With the win, Texas jumped to No. 9 in RPI, a metric strongly considered by the selection committee. More importantly, at least in the near team, it gave the Longhorns an important off-day to rest ahead of a 9 a.m. contest Saturday with a spot in the Big 12 tournament championship on the line.
With a pitching staff that surrenders leads at a clip akin to the rate it holds them, Gordon’s magnum opus as a Longhorn lightened the load on the Texas bullpen. His win, No. 7 on the year, has Texas in the best position to play postseason games in Austin since it was near the top of the polls in early March.
