The UTRGV Vaqueros fell to Houston Christian on Friday night 9-6 in the Southland Conference Tournament.

The Vaqueros were never able to climb out of the deep hole they dug themselves early, falling behind 7-0 with all seven runs coming in a monstrous second inning for Houston Christian.

All seven earned runs were attributed to Vaqueros starter Jacob Limas, who went just 1.1 innings before being pulled from the game.

"When you lose all that momentum and just give up that many runs early, it's just so hard on your offense to comeback," Vaqueros head coach Derek Matlock said. "We gotta fight. We gotta do a good job playing defense, that's something that we haven't been doing as good a job as we've done all year."

UTRGV's comeback attempt pulled them within one run after a five-run sixth inning powered by four RBI singles from Cameron Carter, Isaac Lopez, Armani Raygoza, and Steven Lancia.

However, the Huskies pitching shut UTRGV down from there, holding the Vaqueros scoreless for the rest of the game. Houston Christian added two insurance runs late to seal the win.

The Vaqueros would now have to win three straight games to advance to the Southland Conference championship series. The path to that goal starts on Saturday at 1:00 p.m. when the Vaqueros take on Texas A&M - Corpus Christi. The winner of that game will play Houston Christian later on Saturday at 6:00 p.m. in which they would need to win in order to force a winner-take-all game on Sunday against the Huskies.

"We have a good enough team to do it. That's why we won the conference," Coach Matlock said of the daunting task ahead for the Vaqueros to stay alive in the SLC tournament. "Anybody can have a bad game, that's why you play a series on the weekend, and we just had a bad game... It's all right there for us to get. We're definitely talented enough to get it. We've just got to do a good job with starting pitching."

Tickets are still available for tomorrow's games at UTRGVTickets.com.