This week in Texas baseball: Just how historic was the weekend series sweep of Cal Poly?

For the Texas Longhorns, it wasn't a bad weekend at the ballpark.

Texas improved to 6-1 with three wins over Cal Poly, each witnessed by more than 7,600 fans at UFCU Disch-Falk Field. Saturday's announced crowd of 8,033 was the largest at Disch-Falk for a game that was neither an exhibition matchup or a postseason regional game. Disch-Falk opened in 1975.

A look back: Texas went 4-0

Feb. 20: Texas 20, Houston Christian 0. While emptying its bench against the overmatched Huskies, Texas had 12 players combine for 24 hits. That was one hit shy of a school record that was set in 1953 and matched in 1998.

Friday: Texas 2, Cal Poly 0. An entertaining pitching duel between UT's Lebarron Johnson Jr., and Cal Poly's Jakob Wright. Johnson pitched eight innings of two-hit baseball to get the win.

Saturday: Texas 6, Cal Poly 0. Home runs by Max Belyeu and Jared Thomas provided enough offense thanks to a combined shutout from Charlie Hurley, Grant Fontenot and David Shaw.

Sunday: Texas 7, Cal Poly 0. Belyeu, Peyton Powell and Jalin Flores combined for four homers and two defensive highlights as Texas recorded a series sweep and fourth straight shutout.

Texas makes history with series shutout

After Texas wrapped up the weekend with its third straight shutout win over Cal Poly on Sunday, head coach David Pierce said, "I've been doing this a long time and that's the first time ever that we've gone three straight at home in a series, same team, and put up 27 innings of shutout baseball."

This is Pierce's eighth season at Texas and 13th as a head coach at the college level. He isn't the only one who hasn't seen a UT team shut out an opposing team over the entirety of a three-game series. In fact, this is only the third time that it's ever been done by a Texas team — and the Longhorns have been playing baseball since 1896:

∙ 1971, at SMU: Texas needed only three pitchers to sweep the Mustangs in Dallas — Burt Hooton, Mike Beard and Donnie Horne. The Horns swept SMU by a combined score of 21-0. Hooton pitched only seven innings because it was the first game of a doubleheader, but he registered 14 strikeouts.

∙ 2002, vs. UT-Pan Am: Nine UT pitchers combined to allow 15 hits and no runs in the series sweep. Justin Simmons, who was honored this past Saturday as part of the TraDISCHion series, threw eight scoreless innings in the second win. Those were three of Texas' nine shutout wins of that national championship season.

∙ 2024, vs. Cal Poly: One week after producing 12 runs in a three-game series against Missouri, Cal Poly was limited to 17 hits by Texas, which allowed only five Mustangs runners to even reach third base. Cal Poly struck out 26 times over the weekend.

Cade O'Hara makes his debut at a new position

The 36 innings pitched by Texas this weekend were divided up between 12 players. But not all of those players are listed as pitchers on the roster.

Last Tuesday, sophomore Cade O'Hara closed out the game by pitching a scoreless ninth inning. He retired the three batters he faced and registered a strikeout. Those 13 pitches he threw against Houston Christian were the first 13 of his collegiate career. O'Hara is a reserve infielder for the Longhorns who started twice at shortstop in 2023.

Pierce said O'Hara participated in a bullpen session a few weeks ago and the coach liked what he saw. "He can throw strikes and he can throw strikes with three pitches and he's pretty comfortable on the mound. He's a two-way (player), I guess," Pierce said.

What did the rest of the Longhorns think of O'Hara moonlighting as a reliever? Hypothetically speaking, would Flores take O'Hara deep if the slugging shortstop were to face his teammate in the ninth inning of a close game?

"If I'm going to put my chance up against him, I'm saying I'm winning 100% of the time," Flores said. "But I'm gonna give him all the credit. He's done a tremendous job around here."

Notable number: 9

On Sunday, UT posted a photo on social media to celebrate Black History Month. The photo featured the nine Black players on the roster: Porter Brown, Johnson, Andre Duplantier II, Cam Constantine, Jayden Duplantier, Dee Kennedy, Nik Sanders, Oliver Service and Tommy Farmer IV.

Why is this significant? According to the Texas game notes, "the Longhorns have History Makers on the current baseball roster, with nine Black players making up 22% of the roster. According to a USA Today article from 2021, of the 279 Division I teams not from historically Black colleges and universities, only 4% of players were Black in 2021. Last season in Major League Baseball, only 6.1% of players were African American. The Texas roster has been among the most diverse in Division I baseball over the last five seasons with between 12-22% of the roster being composed of Black players."

What does this mean?

Following its good week, Texas made a little movement in the D1Baseball poll. The Longhorns moved into the No. 15 slot of college baseball's go-to poll. Texas was 16th in the first two polls of the season.

Up next: Tests get much tougher for Texas

Texas will close out an eight-game homestand on Tuesday against St. John's before heading to Houston to play No. 3 LSU (7-1), Texas State (4-3) and No. 9 Vanderbilt (5-3) at the Astros Foundation College Classic. St. John's (2-2) opened its season with a 9-5 win over a Florida team that was No. 2 in the Top 25 preseason poll.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas baseball records historic sweep, shutout streak during big week