Baseball sweeps Buffs
Utah State Baseball swept Colorado in its series this weekend. The Aggies won three close games, two of which came on their last at bat.
“They were a couple of exciting games for our team,” coach Brett Al-Amari said.
In the bottom of the seventh inning of the third game, Justin Johnson hit the first pitch of his at bat over the fence for a walk-off, two-run homer, giving Johnson seven RBIs for the weekend.
With the bases loaded in the seventh inning of game four, Orion Bell stepped to the plate and singled to right, driving in Kyle McDonald to win the game 10-9. The single was the fourth hit of the game for the Aggies, who were walked 11 times and hit by pitches three times.
No Aggie relief pitcher allowed a run after the fifth inning in all four games.
“Our pitching kept us in the game so we could make the strong come-from-behind wins,” Al-Amari said.
In the first game, Greg Ladd pitched well. He took a no-hitter into the sixth inning, but a grounder to third took a bad hop and bounced into left field to break up the no hitter.
Ladd pitched a complete game for his second win of the season, striking out eight and walking one.
In game two, Zack Hancock pitched two and two-thirds scoreless innings to get the win for the Aggies. Shawn Morrisey got the win in game three while Jason Miller won game four.
The Aggies scored 11 runs in the first four innings of game one. McDonald hit a home run in the first to put the Aggies up 2-0. After scoring three runs in the second the Ags batted around in the fourth. They had eight hits as they scored six runs to give them an 11-0 advantage.
In the second game Saturday, the Ags had a tougher time of it. Going into the bottom of the sixth the score was tied 6-6.
“We play a lot of small ball and try and be really aggressive on the bases,” Al-Amari said.
The Aggies did just that in the bottom of the sixth. Zach Griffith led off the inning with a walk. Connor Jones was put in as a pinch runner and promptly stole second.
Zach Dunn tried to advance the runner on a sacrifice bunt. While fielding the bunt the pitcher threw the ball into right field allowing Jones to score.
The wheels proceeded to come off for Colorado as Johnson hit a two-run homer to give him five RBIs for the game and the very next pitch Tyler Al-Amari hit a home run to put the Aggies up 10-6.
It feels good to sweep two teams in a row. Now we need to do it on the road.”
The baseball team will play two games this weekend in Colorado and then two against Wyoming.
-krn@cc.usu.edu