A Texas team with so much thunder in its bats ended the year with a thud.

A rather emphatic one.

That’s all that needs to be said after the Longhorns' resounding 10-2 loss Sunday to a very strong Louisiana club that bounced Texas from the College Station Regional and ended what head coach David Pierce labeled a "turbulent" season oh so prematurely.

Clearly deflated by their 11-inning, 4-2 loss to Texas A&M in a game that finished at midnight on Saturday, the Longhorns almost went through the motions on a steamy Sunday afternoon at Blue Bell Park.

Then they went home.

After an impressive win over Louisiana in the regional opener, Texas went 0-and-2.

Or oh no and 2.

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Texas' performance seemed flat and lifeless from the outset and raises questions about the direction of the program and Pierce’s future that may not be answered anytime soon.

Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte was attending the Women’s College World Series in Oklahoma City, where the top-seeded Longhorns and No. 2 seed Oklahoma Sooners are the only unbeaten 2-0 teams in the field, and he couldn’t be reached for comment.

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But there seems little clarity right now about the Longhorns’ future plans as the school prepares to join the migraine-inducing SEC in July.

“Today didn't go very well for us,” Pierce said. “We kind of let it unravel. But tough day, tough day.”

Trying to put this season in perspective

Texas’ disappointing performance in the regional certainly didn't do Pierce any favors, but he’s well aware, fair or unfair, that he’s at the helm of perhaps the most pressurized and demanding coaching spot in college baseball. After all, it was the late great Augie Garrido, winner of two of the school’s six national championships, including its last one in 2005, who once famously said reaching Omaha every year was “mandatory” at Texas.

Texas' NCAA-record 38 CWS appearances and 88 CWS victories reflect that outsized expectation. A 36-24 record and early NCAA exit aren’t the standard in Austin. Pierce didn't help himself with his failed experiment as his own pitching coach this season.

Pierce’s eighth UT team was maddeningly inconsistent and earned only a 3 seed in this regional. It alternated between spectacular play, winning every Big 12 series but one and finishing third in the top-heavy conference, and uninspiring performances with losses to UT-Rio Grande Valley and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.

That inexplicable quality reappeared with two straight losses in the Big 12 Tournament and two more in this regional.

“There's so many things that you can look at this team and realize how damn good they were throughout the course of the year,” Pierce said. “How they fought and clawed and played for each other and never gave in. There’s so many times it didn’t look very, very good for the squad, and they just stuck together. They had grit, toughness.”

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How much did Texas have left in its tank?

Coming back just 14 hours after that heartbreaking defeat by the Aggies — much of the damage self-inflicted with three errors — the Longhorns had little left in the tank. Especially offensively.

Curiously enough, pitching had been Texas’ sore spot all year long. But not in this regional.

The scary good offense barely showed a pulse in College Station and couldn’t break through against Louisiana’s cagey left-hander Chase Morgan and overpowering right-hander reliever LP Langevin and his 95-mph fastball. In the two losses, Texas managed just two hits in 18 chances with runners in scoring position. With the bases loaded Sunday, the Longhorns were hitless in five at-bats.

Texas’ Max Belyeu, the Big 12 player of the year, for instance, was mired in an awful funk. He had one hit in 15 at-bats. Peyton Powell, a mainstay in the offense the last two years, had two hits in 15 plate appearances. Neither drove in a run in three games.

Your biggest bats have to come up big in June.

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So don’t blame the pitching.

Ace Whitehead followed up Lebarron Johnson Jr.’s impressive outing in the loss to the Aggies and was very effective through 6⅔ innings. But the offense remained stalled as it had with only four hits against Texas A&M. Consequently, the roof caved in with a pair of three-run jacks from the Ragin’ Cajuns by Jose Torres, whose bat flip went almost as high as his bomb off the scoreboard in left-center, and Bryan Broussard.

Texas had no answer for the onslaught.

Now it has more issues to deal with.

The eyes of Texas are now on David Pierce

Del Conte has always steadfastly said he’ll never make a decision on a coach until a detailed evaluation after the season ends. He recognizes Pierce isn’t everybody’s favorite coach on campus and knows baseball might be Texas’ least prepared program for the SEC move unless it’s soccer.

That doesn’t mean the baseball situation is dire and in bad shape. It isn’t. The administration just has to decide if it is playing up to its capabilities even as it knows Pierce has had a lot of success here.

He has been to the super-regional round three of the last four years and has taken three teams to the College World Series, one as recently as two seasons ago. Two of those clubs were eliminated with two quick losses — one of them to the Aggies — while the terrific 2021 team made it to the Final Four in Omaha.

Pierce is a good coach. That’s clear. But is he a championship coach?

That’s for Del Conte and regents chairman Kevin Eltife to decide.

Texas baseball prepares to move on (to the SEC)

This was one of the oddest years for Texas baseball in memory. Destitute of pitching but potent hitting with tons of pop, so much that its 112 home runs were the second-most in school history.

If anything, the team may have been too home run-centric like the 2022 club with 128 homers that didn’t go yard once in two games at pitcher-friendly Charles Schwab Park, the home of the CWS.

Texas should return much talent on paper with four sophomores and three freshmen in Sunday’s starting lineup although the major league draft and the revolving door that is the transfer portal makes it impossible to predict a roster’s makeup in this day and age.

Two of the best players and big-time producers — shortstop Jalin Flores and first baseman/outfielder Jared Thomas — are draft-eligible sophomores. Some insiders expect them to leave. Powell, who has been tremendous the last two seasons, is a senior, and their pitcher with the most potential, Johnson, has graduated.

Some in the fan base have grumbled for a while that the program has slipped, albeit somewhat. But any decline might be exacerbated by the snake pit that is SEC baseball.

However, Pierce is fiercely competitive.

“These guys are tough as nails,” he said. “We never backed down. We just kept coming. And obviously this isn't where we want to be, but it is what it is.”

Now he has to see what will be.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas baseball elimination ends season on sour note in College Station