AUSTIN, Texas – After a two-hour weather delay, the Concordia Texas baseball team broke out the bats in game one of the American Southwest Conference Gold Bracket Series, scoring 16 runs, including a 10-run second inning, to take down LeTourneau 16-7 on Friday.

Four Tornados would have at least two hits, led by Carson Cox's 3-for-5 performance at the plate, scoring twice and driving in four runs on the night. Bret Leiferman, Jacob Stegent and Marcus Thach, meanwhile, each had two hits and each scored a pair of runs.

The Yellow Jackets opened the scoring in the first inning, scratching across three runs to take an early lead. In the bottom half of the inning, CTX countered, cutting the deficit to 3-1 on Cox's RBI single to left.

After Matthew Williams worked around a leadoff single in the second to retire the side, the Tornados' bats came alive in the bottom half of the inning with a 10-run eruption, all coming with two outs.

Thach got CTX started with a one-out single. He would reach third base after swiping second and third and scored on a LETU throwing error to tie the game at three-all and allowing Novak to reach first base.

The next 10 Tornados reached base, highlighted by a bases-clearing three-run double by Colin Mask and an RBI triple from Stegent, and led 11-3 after two frames.

The Yellow Jackets did not go down quietly though, pushing across two runs in the third and fourth innings, cutting CTX's lead to 11-7 before Diego Cruz-Garcia, who came on in relief with one away in the fourth, induced a fly out and a strikeout to end the threat.

Cruz-Garcia was superb out of the bullpen for the Tornados, tossing 5.2 innings, allowing no hits, two walks and striking out eight LETU batters to pick up his third win of the season.

In the fifth, CTX added to their lead thanks to a Cox two-run triple and a Cameron Rape RBI sac bunt, pushing it to a 14-7 score after five frames.

The Tornados tacked on two more runs in the eighth, but it was more than enough for CTX, rolling to a 16-7 win over the Yellow Jackets.

It is the highest scoring output of the season for the Tornados and the most runs the program has scored since March 10, 2018, when the team exploded for 19 runs in a 19-9 win against East Texas Baptist.

Concordia Texas will seek to win their first conference tournament championship since 2012 when they will take on LeTourneau on Friday at 2 p.m. at Tornado Field. The game was originally scheduled for a 6 p.m. start but the game was moved up due to forecasted weather in the area.