Baseball club takes 3 of 4 in ‘home’ stand
They say you can go home but you can’t go back.
In the case of the Utah State club baseball team, you can’t even go home.
The Aggies were forced to play their first home series in Tremonton instead of Providence because of inclement weather in Cache Valley, but USU turned Tremonton into home sweet home.
After starting the season with a 1-12 record, USU even found home plate a little more often, starting its conference season by taking three out of four.
Saturday, the Aggies downed Montana State 5-1 in the opener, then fell to Humboldt State 10-4 in the afternoon.
They swept Montana State by pounding the Bobcats 14-3 Sunday morning, then avenged their sole loss by downing Humboldt State 7-4.
“We did a lot better,” said Aggie Head Coach Ernie Rivers. “We’re starting to come together, starting to see the ball better.”
Righthander Greg Ladd shut down the Bobcats Sunday morning by striking out 14 in five innings. Ladd, a sophomore transfer from the University of Nebraska, gave up three hits and two earned runs in picking up the victory.
Sophomore Tyler Al-Imari led USU’s offensive explosion in the win. Al-Imari had six RBIs in the first game and in both Sunday games was a homer short of hitting for the cycle.
Dan Gay also helped the Aggie cause by going 5-for-11 on the weekend.
“Overall, we hit pretty well,” Rivers said. “We were a completely different team [than in the early season losses]. We didn’t take anything for granted and we were more focused.”
Rivers said the Aggies also improved defensively.
Even though there were some mistakes, he said, “we made all the important plays.”
Picking up some wins will help USU in the upcoming conference season, Rivers said.
“A lot of it’s mental,” he said. “When we play club teams we expect to win. Against club teams, they know no matter what the score, they have a chance.”
Utah State will face conference rival Weber State this Saturday.
Rivers said tripling his team’s win total over one weekend could be a shot in the arm for the Ags.
“They built some confidence,” he said. “The biggest thing is just to get some confidence and know they can play well together.”
The games will begin at 11 a.m. Saturday and noon on Sunday at Davis High School.
-royburton@cc.usu.edu