Baseball suffers first loss against Wildcats
The offense wasn’t as strong as it has been, but the pitching and defense were able to pick up the slack for the Utah State baseball team. They won two out of three games against Weber State last weekend.
The first game was played in Providence, while the other two games were played at Davis High School in
For the first time this season, nobody on USU’s team had a home run.
The offense was able to come up with six runs in the first game, enough to win. However, the pitching of Kyle McDonald and Justin McDermmitt clinched the victory for the Ags. In game one, McDonald and McDermmitt combined to allow only three runs through all nine innings.
“I felt our pitching and defense was solid,” assistant coach Ernie Rivers said.
After three errors in game one, the Aggies only committed one in the final two games.
Pitcher Greg Ladd was able to help out the Aggies as well. In game two, he threw a complete game shutout to give the Aggies an 8-0 win.
Ladd struck out 15 Wildcats to get the win and extend the season-opening win streak to nine games.
But that streak ended in game three. The Aggies lost to WSU for the first loss this season. Going into the fifth inning, the Aggies were tied 1-1, but Weber State was able to score five runs over the next four innings to put the Wildcats up 6-1.
During the final game, the offense was only able to provide two runs, which put McDermitt in a tough spot as the losing pitcher for the Aggies during game three.
No team feels good about the first loss of the season but the Aggies are optimistic about their remaining games for this fall.
“Now that we got our first loss out of the way, I think our players will relax more at the plate and score the runs that we are capable of,” head coach Brett Al-Imari said.
The offense wasn’t as prolific as past weekends: as McDonald went 5-11 over the three games and Ryan Palmer was 5-12 with four RBIs and three runs scored.
Al-Imari said that improvement is the name of the fall season for the Aggies.
“Weber State was a much better team than Wyoming and Colorado. That’s why we play better teams so that we can improve ourselves,” Al-Imari said, “I am really excited for the rest of this season.
“We have the talent and the players to continue to be dominant.”
The Aggies will travel to Ogden this weekend to play in the Weber State Tournament Oct. 8-10.
-krn@cc.usu.edu