University of San Francisco Athletics

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SAN FRANCISCO—Gonzaga continued to put pressure on the Dons' pitchers and defense, which ended up costing the Dons as they lost 5-2 on Sunday afternoon.
 
"We score one in the first and we gave it right back," San Francisco head coach Nino Giarratano said. "We failed to play defense and we didn't make good pitches and they killed us with the bunt game. We just couldn't defend them, couldn't stop their running game."
 
"You can't win in conference and make [six] errors. We've got to play catch and we didn't do that."
 
The Dons committed six errors on the weekend and were tormented by Gonzaga's bunting. The Bulldogs dropped down six sacrifice bunts including two successful suicide squeezes. On the weekend, Gonzaga completed nine sacrifice hits.
 
"We're going to have to play better defense, we definitely have to pitch better and get the offense better," Giarratano said. "We've got three components right now we've got to fix and hopefully we can get that done this week."
 
The loss put San Francisco (8-9, 0-3 WCC) in a hole early in conference play as it completed a sweep for Gonzaga, last year's regular season champion.
 
It was only a week ago that the Dons were on a high after sweeping through the Cal Baseball Classic while giving up only one run. This week, the Dons starting pitchers surrendered 23 hits in 18.2 innings.
 
"The inconsistency is the problem right there," Giarratano said. "A week ago, we were pitching, we were playing defense and we were getting some big hits. We come out this week and we kind of got stung where we didn't pitch well, we didn't play good defense and the offense was nowhere to be found."
 
Gonzaga had its leadoff man reach base each of the first five innings of the game and the Bulldogs were able to cash in early.
 
After the Dons had gone up 1-0 in the first, Gonzaga came right back and answered in the second. Caleb Wood doubled to left and, after a balk advanced him to third, Taylor Jones singled him home to tie the game at one.
 
Gonzaga added runs in the fourth and fifth innings to take a 3-1 lead but it had a chance to blow the game wide open in the seventh. With runners on first and third and one out, Jones dropped down a suicide squeeze bunt back to Houston Hibberd and his glove flip to Ryan Matranga was not in time and gave Gonzaga a three-run lead.
 
After a hit-by-pitch, the bases were loaded with one out but Hibberd got an infield fly and a ground out to keep the game close.
 
The Dons got on the board again in the seventh when Bradley Zimmer scored on a sacrifice fly by Derek Atkinson. It was as close as the Dons would get.
 
San Francisco hit .200 as a team over the weekend and had only half the number of at bats with runners in scoring position that Gonzaga had.
 
"Offensively, we're just not there," Giarratano said. "We don't have the right guys in the right spots and we're not putting good swings on it right now. We're going to have to play a lot better or we're going to be in some trouble in this conference."