May 27, 2016
Box Score
By Art Garcia | @ArtGarcia92
SAN MARCOS, Texas - The season ended for UT Arlington with Friday afternoon's 3-0 loss to South Alabama in the Sun Belt Championship at Bobcat Ballpark.
The seventh-seeded Mavericks beat the No. 2 Jaguars 4-2 on Wednesday, but lost the rematch to get bounced from the league tournament. UTA put itself in a must-win situation after losing 6-0 earlier Friday to Georgia Southern.
The failure to generate offense was the downfall with the season on the line. The Mavs played 16 scoreless innings on Friday and managed only three hits.
"I'm proud of the year we had," UT Arlington coach Darin Thomas said. "It was tough to score in this one for both teams with the wind blowing in. In the first game we ran into two really good arms.
"I'm going to be positive about it. It's disappointing. You're not going to win when you don't score. We tried everything. We mixed it up a little bit, tried a little bit of everything and it just didn't happen today."
The Mavs finished the 2016 campaign 30-28.
"I'm proud of 30 wins," Thomas said. "That's four out of the last five years we've had 30. That was a goal at the beginning of the year. We just wanted to improve over last year. We had a six-game improvement, but by no means were we satisfied getting that 30th win. We wanted to go on."
The Mavericks had their first hit of the day spanning both games in the fifth inning on Darien McLemore's one-out single to center. UTA finished its loss to the Eagles by going hitless over the seven innings played in the morning.
The Jaguars scored a run in each of the first two innings against UTA starter Matt Michalski, though one run was unearned. South Alabama tacked on another unearned run in the fourth against Dylan Schneider.
The Mavericks did get two runners on in the ninth with one out, but a ground out and fly ball ended the game.
NOTES: UTA was last shut out in back-to-back games in 1999. ... McLemore finished his career with 203 games played, good for ninth on UTA's all-time list. ... UTA coach Darin Thomas is 13-12 all-time in conference tournaments.
