A&M sweeps Georgia in SEC debut

Working off early season struggles, sophomore Blake Allemand kick-started the Texas A&M offense Sunday afternoon behind his first career home run, knocking in junior Krey Bratsen as the Aggies rolled to an 11-4 victory over Georgia.

With the win, A&M (14-7, 3-0 SEC) completed the three-game series sweep of visiting Georgia (8-11, 0-3 SEC) in the Aggies’ Southeastern Conference debut. A&M downed the Bulldogs 4-1 on Friday before closing out a tight 2-1 extra innings victory Saturday.

“It's no secret that I was struggling early on,” Allemand said following Sunday’s victory. “I've been trying to take it one game at a time and have good at-bats, do anything I can do for the team. Today I was fortunate enough to get a hit."

On the mound, freshman Jason Freeman made his first career weekend start, pitching four and two-thirds innings while freshman reliever Matt Kent (1-1) earned the win behind one and two-thirds scoreless innings.

During Saturday’s victory, Allemand scored junior Jace Statum in the third inning to push the Aggies to an early 1-0 lead. Georgia knotted the score at 1-1 in the fifth before Bratsen notched a walkoff single in the 10th inning to give A&M the 2-1 win.

Sophomore Daniel Mengden pitched a career-long eight innings in the victory, allowing one earned run on six hits while garnering eight strikeouts.

“This is a big-time win for us. It’s huge for our team,” Bratsen said Saturday. “I’m just glad I was able to be a part of that and come through when the team needed me.”

In the Aggies’ series opener on Friday, A&M jumped out to an early lead in the first inning after sophomore Mitchell Nau drove Bratsen home with an RBI single. During the second, Statum plated Mengden with a sacrifice bunt. The Aggies tacked on two insurance runs to close out the eighth inning and the 4-1 victory.

Senior Kyle Martin (2-2) garnered the win over six and one-third innings, striking out six while allowing seven hits.

“Kyle Martin set the tone, we grabbed the lead early and those two runs probably felt like four to them,” A&M head coach Rob Childress said. “For us to score two runs in the eighth was huge. From the start I thought we were ready to play the game.”