KINGSVILLE, Texas - The Texas A&M-Kingsville baseball program got a career day on the mound from senior Preston Plovanich (Santa Fe, Texas) and turned in a 5-0 blanking of Missouri-St. Louis on Friday at Nolan Ryan Field to take the first game of the weekend home series.

"Preston pitched like a senior tonight like he's supposed to do," said head coach Jason Gonzales. "We want our Friday night guy to put up some zeroes and save our bullpen. Any time you have a four-game series, you don't want to go to the bullpen too early.

"He had a lot of pitches working and locating well. He toughed it out a bit, the hitters gave him enough runs and that's all he needed."

Plovanich went eight innings on the hill for the Javelinas (6-4) and struck out 10 Tritons (0-4) in the process. The Santa Fe, Texas, native surrendered only four hits and allowed only three runners to reach second base for the duration of the contest.

The Hogs went to work in the third after senior Dylan Hutcheson (Wichita Falls, Texas) led off the bottom half of the inning with a double down the left field line with a 1-1 count. Redshirt junior Kohl Ullman (Houston, Texas) put runners at the corners to follow up, courtesy of a picture-perfect bunt single into no-man's land between the mound and the third baseman.

The first run came home after Ullman swiped second in the ensuing at bat, while an errant pitch found its way to the backstop to give Hutcheson access to the plate.

Ullman came home one batter later after junior Seth Spinn (Holland, Texas) lined a one-out comebacker right back to starting pitcher Ryan Siverly that ricocheted off the righty's leg and came to a rest in the grass a few feet away.

A desperate attempt to retire Spinn sailed wide right as the throw from Siverly went off target and pushed Ullman home while Spinn made it to second base.

A double to left from sophomore Giancarlo Servin (Edinburg, Texas) plated Spinn just one pitch later to end the scoring and give the Hogs a 3-0 cushion going into the fourth.

Plovanich, meanwhile, gave up a leadoff single to Jacob Stoker in the top of the fifth, but faced the minimum over the next nine batters to keep the Tritons off balanced.

TAMUK padded the lead in the fifth after redshirt senior Alex Gonzalez (Corpus Christi, Texas) drew a five-pitch walk and came home in the following at bat on a double to left center from Spinn, while a bounding-ball single through the left side from Servin in the seventh brought Gonzalez home to set the score at 5-0.

Plovanich worked a near-flawless eighth to keep the Javelinas firmly in control before he handed off the keys to redshirt freshman Jacob Vasquez (Victoria, Texas) in the ninth.

Vasquez issued a leadoff walk to Riley Pawelski but got help from redshirt senior Pablo Hernandez (Havana, Cuba) after Keaton King looped a low popup to the first baseman and secured the double play with a grab and a tag.

Keaton Bruegenhemke became the final footnote of the evening as he was retired on five pitches to hand the Hogs a win in their first home contest of 2019 at 5-0.

Spinn and Servin lead the offensive effort with a pair of hits each. The former put up one run, one RBI, a double and a stolen base, while the latter added two RBI and a double.

Junior Cameron Melcher (Kerrville, Texas) provided the pop with his second career triple, first in a blue and gold uniform, as he took the first pitch he saw into deep left center with one out in the sixth.

Game two of the series is set for 1 p.m. CT on Saturday, February 23, for the first half of the doubleheader. The backend of the doubleheader will start approximately 30 minutes following the conclusion of the frontend.

Stay up-to-date with everything Javelina baseball at JavelinaAthletics.com, follow the program on Twitter @JavelinaBSB and see recent news on Facebook at /JavelinaBSB

-JAVELINAS-