University of San Francisco Athletics

Box Score

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SAN FRANCISCO—The Dons rallied in the late innings after falling behind by seven but came up short as they dropped the West Coast Conference contest to BYU 7-5 on Friday afternoon.
 
"I'm proud of the guys. They didn't give up," San Francisco head coach Nino Giarratano said. "They fought back. Tying run came to the plate three times. We had a good rally there in the ninth, we just hit a ball right at them for a double play."
 
"We had a great effort offensively coming back. We really out played them defensively. We just didn't pitch."
 
With the Dons trailing 7-0 in the seventh inning, they finally got on the board when Bradley Zimmer hit a two-run home run to right, which gives the junior five on the season. Zimmer went 3-for-4 and reached base all four times he came to the plate.
 
In the eighth, the Dons added more. Derek Atkinson led off the inning with a home run and then three doubles, including hits from Bob Cruikshank and Justin McCullough, resulted in two more runs for the Dons to cut the BYU lead to 7-5.
 
Cruikshank went 2-for-3 with two doubles and a RBI.
 
Later in the inning, the Dons had runners on the corners with two outs for Zimmer.
 
"We had the right guy in the right situation," Giarratano said.
 
BYU went to Saturday's scheduled starter Kolton Mahoney and he struck out Zimmer to end the inning. Mahoney held the Dons down in the ninth to pick up the save.
 
The Dons return to the field on Saturday afternoon for the rubber match of the series against BYU at noon at AT&T Park as part of the Dante Benedetti Baseball Classic.
 
BYU took a 1-0 lead in the first and added three more in the third. After a walk and a double to lead-off the inning set up runners at second and third, Brennon Lund singled to drive in one and put BYU up two. BYU scored again on a suicide squeeze by Parker Starr and a bases loaded walk to put the Cougars up 4-0.
 
The Cougars tacked on two more in the fourth and chased Dons starter Christian Cecilio from the game in the process. He lasted 3.1 innings and allowed six runs on six hits with three walks.
 
"We didn't play real well from behind and we haven't pitched well enough to give ourselves a chance to win games in this conference. We've got to get that fixed."
 
In five conference games, the Dons starters have given up 22 runs in 28 innings.