TOWN of CARY, N.C. – The fight was there, but the situational hits were not.

Angelo State's season came to an end with a 4-1 loss to Henderson State at the NCAA Division II Baseball Championship on Wednesday with the Rams stranding nine runners on base overall and five in the last two innings at the USA Baseball National Training Complex.  

"I have been proud of this group all season for their effort and determination and that continued today," ASU head coach Kevin Brooks said. "We just were not able to get the big hit. This team is going to play hard and compete every day while doing it the right way and sometimes that doesn't mean you're going to win. They had a commitment to doing things right every day and that's what brought us to this point this season. It wasn't a surprise that we kept fighting until the end because this is team full of guys who didn't want the season to end."

After the loss by the Rams (42-18) there are currently on four teams still playing in the nation with Henderson State (33-20) moving on to play Tampa on Thursday. ASU was playing in its second DII College World Series under Brooks after winning the NCAA DII South Central Championship last weekend where it had battled back from an opening-round regional loss to win four straight elimination games. After falling to the Reddies on Saturday in the national tournament's opening game, the Rams never lost belief in winning the program's first national championship and were in position to advance before the team was unable to manufactor runs against HSU for the second straight game. 

"It was our dream and goal from the start to come out and win this thing," ASU senior Brett David said.

Cameron Massengill went 2-for-4 with a pair of singles to lead the Rams who finished the game with nine hits, but also stranded nine runners on base including two who were left at third. J.C. Snyder provided the only run production of the game for the Rams with a two-out triple into the right-center field gap in the first inning to score David Goggin who had led off the bottom of the inning with his fifth hit of the national tournament. The triple was Snyder's second of the season, but the momentum from breaking through after ASU had lost 4-0 to the Reddies on Saturday.  

"It kind of got us back to what we had been doing, but it didn't carry through the rest of the game," Snyder said.  

Matt Shannon started his fifth game of the season for the Rams and threw up two scoreless innings to start the game before the Reddies got on the board with a two-out, two-run home run by Jordan Taylor who pulled the ball over the right-field fence to give HSU a 2-1 lead which it wouldn't relinquish. Shannon (4-2) went three innings, striking out one and allowing those two runs before exiting for reliever Graylon Brown who stranded two in the fourth by coaxing a double play with the bases loaded that was turned by Paxton DeLaGarza, Sam Kohler and David for a 6-4-3 double play that kept it a one-run game. Henderson State would strike again in the fifth though with Lance Fields hitting a two-out run-scoring double and then Tadarious Hawkins hitting another run-scoring double to left field.

"I really thought we would feed off of Graylon getting out of the bases-loaded situation more, but we didn't," Brooks said. "They were able to get the two tack-on runs with the two-out hit and then the fly ball that I thought we would get to but didn't. That was disappointing because it was a big stretch in the game where we were right there with them if we could have made some plays and come through with some hits."

Brown would settle in though, striking out five and allowing only three hits through six innings of work. Brown recorded 13 straight outs to complete the game with 1-2-3 innings in the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth to give the Rams a chance to win, but the Rams were unable to capitalize on opportunities that presented itself. The biggest opportunities came in the eighth and ninth innings, especially the eighth when the Rams loaded the bases with walks from Sam Kohler, Snyder and Derek Tyner. With only one out and the bases loaded, Massengill hit the ball hard down the third-base line but Claude Johnson fielded it, touched third and threw him out for a 5-3 double play to end the ASU threat. The ninth took on the same feel with Cody Semler reaching on a walk and then Elias Aguirre reaching on a bunt single, but a Goggin strikeout and a Kohler line-out to second base would end the ASU season.  

Goggin and Massengill led the Rams throughout the three games in Cary with both of them going 5-for-12 at the plate. The Rams, who are the only current Lone Star Conference program to ever reach the NCAA DII College World Series, finished the season having won 15 of their last 20 games. ASU was 5-0 in elimination games this postseason before falling to the Reddies and matched the program's best finish by being only one of six teams remaining at the end of the season.

"This team is special and will go down as one of the better ones at Angelo State," Brooks said. "We have an expectation to get to a regional every year and to get here. The bottom line is that they played better than us, just like they played better than us on Saturday. We just didn't play good enough to win the game. I thought we kept competing and we overcame some things. I could not be more proud of our group."