‘Eaters humble Texas

ROUND ROCK, Texas — Both Taylor Holiday and Scott Gorgen finished what they started Saturday to help the Anteaters win the game Coach Dave Serrano called the biggest in the program’s history.

But despite a 3-1 triumph over storied Texas, the No. 4 national seed, in the winner’s bracket game of the NCAA Regional at the Dell Diamond, Serrano and some of his players were quick to point out that nothing is finished quite yet.

The win put the Anteaters (42-15-1), ranked No. 9 in the most recent Baseball America poll, in the driver’s seat in the double-elimination regional format.

UCI, which was 0-4 in Division I regionals before posting back-to-back wins in Round Rock, will play today at 4 p.m. against the winner of today’s 10 a.m. elimination game between Texas (45-16) and Wake Forest (34-28). Either Texas or Wake Forest would need to beat UCI twice — with a second game, if necessary, scheduled Monday — to advance to the Super Regionals. UCI would advance with one more win.

“When you have a group of young men and a coaching staff who believe in themselves and one another, you can move mountains,” Serrano said. “We just beat a team [Saturday] that has tradition for years and years in baseball and I know this thing isn’t over with yet. Our toughest game is still in front of us. Today, we thought was the toughest game, the biggest game, in this program’s history. But [today] is.”

Holiday, a junior first baseman Serrano calls the primary energy source for his lineup, led off the game with a booming triple off the base of the wall near 407-foot mark, the deepest part of the ballpark.

Shortstop Ben Orloff then lined an RBI single to left off Texas junior right-hander Adrian Alaniz, the Big 12 Conference Pitcher of the Year who was named second-team All-American by Collegiate Baseball earlier this week.

Alaniz, who took the loss to fall to 12-3, was no match for Gorgen, a sophomore right-hander who nearly threw his third straight complete-game shutout. Gorgen, who allowed just five hits, including an opposite-field home run to Bradley Suttle with two outs in the third, mixed fastballs with changeups to continually keep the Longhorns off balance.

Gorgen, who improved to 11-2 and lowered his earned-run average to 2.91, has now allowed just 12 hits and one run in his last 27 innings. He has 21 strikeouts during that stretch, though he fanned only two Texas hitters.

Holiday reached on an error and subsequently scored from third on a safety squeeze bunt by Matt Morris in the third inning.

Holiday, who is five for 10 in the regional and has now hit in 19 straight games, also doubled in Aaron Lowenstein to add further insurance in the seventh inning for the designated visitors, who had just more than 100 fans amidst the Texas-orange toned crowd of 9,256.

Holiday received a gash on his face, which Serrano said was not wide, but was deep, and required a postgame visit to the doctor. But Holiday, a grinder who typifies the Anteaters’ hard-nosed style of play, wasn’t about to leave the game after being spiked by a base runner at first during an unsuccessful pickoff play in the sixth inning.

Taylor moved to left field in the seventh and, in the ninth, made a sliding catch in left-center of a drive off the bat of Texas catcher Brett Lewis for the game’s final out.

Another key for the Anteaters were two running catches made by center fielder Ollie Linton. Linton sprinted into the right-center gap to snatch a drive off the bat of Russell Modenhauer that would likely have driven in two first-inning runs. Instead, it ended the inning.

Linton, with the potential tying run on second base, then scooted to the warning track in left-center to flag down another Moldenhauer drive for the second out of the sixth.

“The separation between the two teams, in my opinion, was in the outfield,” said Texas Coach Augie Garrido, who coached Serrano at Cal State Fullerton in 1986. “The two plays by the center fielder, both on Moldenhauer balls, created outs and did not generate the runs they had an opportunity to generate. Those were brilliant catches and both prevented runs.”

Garrido also praised the Anteaters’ defense, and was thoroughly impressed with Gorgen.

“That was an outstanding effort by their pitcher,” Garrido said. “He was able to stay focused and attack a target with aggressiveness. He changed speeds in crucial situations, managed the count and showed of a good balance between intensity and relaxation and way-above-average confidence.

“He had a good, crisp, firm fastball that he located with good velocity, and he would follow it up with a changeup, a lot of the time. That’s a tough combination. He made it look easy and when this game is played well, it does look easy. He made the other players less efficient and less effective. It was a brilliantly pitched game.”

Lowenstein went two for four, while Tyler Vaughn and Cody Cipriano added hits for UCI, which managed seven hits off three Texas hurlers.

Lowenstein, a junior catcher, talked about the belief the team has in itself.

“If you’re not pulling on the right side of the chain, you’re not the right guy for us,” Lowenstein said. “We’ve got everyone pulling on the right side right now. We all believe in ourselves and we all believe we’re going to be in the College World Series.”

BARRY FAULKNER can be reached at (714) 966-4615 or at barry.faulkner@latimes.com.

NCAA Regional

UC Irvine 3, Texas 1

Score by Innings

UCI 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 - 3 7 0

Texas 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 - 1 5 3

Gorgen and Lowenstein; Shimada, Krebs (7), Boone (9) and Burnham. W -- Gorgen, 11-2. L -- Shimada, 12-3. 2B -- Holiday (UCI). 3B -- Holiday (UCI). HR -- Wilding (UT).