Texas holds its place in Big 12 championship chase with series-opening win at UCF

The Texas baseball team's weekend in Orlando, Fla., got off to a good start Friday night.

Will Gasparino hit the Longhorns' 100th home run of the season and three pitchers combined to hold Central Florida to just one earned run in a 6-3 win. It was the first meeting ever between these two teams.

Texas (31-19, 16-9) started the weekend in a three-way tie for second place in the Big 12 standings with Oklahoma State and West Virginia. Like Texas, Oklahoma State won Friday, but West Virginia lost. Oklahoma maintained its three-game lead in the championship chase with Friday's 19-7 win over Baylor.

Central Florida (30-16, 11-13) was boasting a top-40 RPI and a 20-7 record at John Euliano Park, and the Knights struck first on a sacrifice fly in the first inning. But after Texas tied the game in the second inning, Gasparino's two-run homer in the fourth — which gave UT a 100-homer season for just the second time in school history — and a successful squeeze bunt in the sixth helped the Longhorns build a 4-1 lead.

Two unearned runs in the seventh inning helped Central Florida narrow the gap, but Texas added two insurance runs on Jalin Flores' single in the ninth. Gage Boehm, who retired the Knights in order in the bottom of the ninth, was credited with the save after he pitched the final two innings. Max Grubbs allowed seven hits over the first 5⅔ innings, and Texas got 1⅓ innings of relief work from Andre Duplantier II.

Texas and Central Florida will resume their series at 5 p.m. Saturday. Texas will start left-hander Ace Whitehead (4-0, 3.73 ERA) against UCF's Dom Stagliano (2-3, 4.07).

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Longhorns open Big 12 baseball series at Central Florida with victory