As those obnoxious celebratory bubbles flooded the skies over Blue Bell Park late Saturday night, the Texas Longhorns sat in the dugout and took in the reality of what had just gone down in the biggest game of the season.

They let Texas A&M off the hook, gifting their once and future fiercest rival a 4-2 extra-inning win in unimaginable fashion. The Horns wasted a money pitching performance against arguably the scariest offense in college baseball and are now one loss from elimination at the College Station Regional.

The Big 12’s second-most reliable defense cratered when it mattered most. Shortstop Jalin Flores picked the worst time of his young career to suffer a case of the yips. The second of his two eighth-inning throwing errors allowed the Aggies' tying run to score. And three innings later, third baseman Peyton Powell flubbed Ted Burton’s slow roller with the bases loaded. It was a tough play, but one that Powell usually makes.

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By the time Chase Lummus uncorked a wild pitch to allow the Aggies’ fourth run to score, the damage had already been done.

“There’s a lot of happy Aggies around here,” A&M reliever Evan Aschenbeck said. “It’s awesome. They’re a great team, but it’s a great win for us and puts us in a great position.”

A rare off night for the Texas defense

In a game where offense took a back seat — the teams combined for only nine hits — the team that blinked in the other key areas would lose. That team was Texas. Flores had only 10 errors in the first 58 games but was beset by a bad case of the Knoblauchs at the worst possible time.

“It just happened,” said coach David Pierce. “ I felt like we played well. Just a couple of miscues. It's a great environment but I thought we handled it exceptionally well."

The Horns have Flores’ back. The sophomore will have to shrug off the worst defensive sequence of his career and get back to playing the type of ball that could extend the season, albeit against seemingly insurmountable odds.

“I've seen Jalin bust his tail, day in and day out,” said first baseman Jared Thomas. “That's just baseball. Things happen. So I have ultimate trust and this team has ultimate trust in every guy that's on that field."

Thomas said nothing was said to his teammate regarding the defensive lapse.

“He knows his job and what he needs to do,” he said. “Any added pressure can kind of go out the window because everybody's got each other's back.”

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A&M leadoff hitter Gavin Grahovac went 0-for-6 with three strikeouts, but that didn’t matter since he was on the winning side of things. He celebrated in the infield by flashing the Horns down.

Hey, it’s a rivalry.

As their No. 3 seed would suggest, the Horns weren’t favored to go into College Station and win this regional. But a casual observer who didn’t know these two teams would not have been able to pick A&M as clearly the better of the two, given how things went through the first seven innings.

Wasting a pair of top-notch pitching performances

Texas starter Lebarron Johnson Jr. gave his team just what it needed. He surrendered only two hits and struck out eight over five innings and made Jared Thomas’ first-inning homer stand up until Caden Sorrell’s solo shot tied it in the fifth.

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The right-hander pitched one of his best games of the year, mixing that high-octane 97 mph gas with a split-finger fastball that has eluded him in the mastery department for much of his junior season. And Gage Boehm deserved better in relief after Kimble Schuessler’s homer gave him a 2-1 lead in the sixth. He ran into some trouble in the eighth, but his defense let him down and the Horns missed out on a golden opportunity to push the Aggies to an elimination game on Sunday.

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Instead, the Longhorns will have to win three games in a row — something that hasn’t happened on a weekend since they completed a sweep of Cal Poly back on Feb. 25.

Texas' loss puts Horns on the brink of elimination

If you’re looking for some needed hope as the season hangs in the balance during Sunday’s elimination game against Louisiana, the Horns lost to Kent State in 2011 before rallying for three straight wins — one over Texas State and two over the Golden Flashes — to win the Austin Regional and eventually qualify for the College World Series.

It goes without saying that the Aggies, who sat atop the national rankings for several weeks this season, are a step up in competition from those teams. If the Horns can figure out how to beat the Ragin’ Cajuns for the second time this weekend, they will have zero wiggle room against the hosts, who have won six of the last seven meetings.

Call this what it is: the beginning of the end for the Horns. They had high hopes in David Pierce’s eighth season, but the pitching staff has been the worst of his tenure and has been often carried by a defense that fielded .974 and a powerful offense that threatened to break the 2022 team’s record 128 homers.

That said, the pitching actually showed up in a must-win situation, but the Horns couldn’t get across the finish line.

The offseason is closing in.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas' defense, not pitching, paved the way in costly NCAA loss to A&M