University of San Francisco Athletics

Box Score

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SAN FRANCISCO—Behind a solid outing from Grant Goodman and some timely hitting, the Dons battled from behind and beat BYU 5-2 in the ninth annual Dante Benedetti Classic and to clinch the West Coast Conference series win on Saturday afternoon at AT&T Park.
 
"What you have to do on a day like today is thank the people that make this possible for all of our guys," San Francisco head coach Nino Giarratano said. "You thank the foundation and all the people that make this possible. It's a great experience for our kids. Hopefully they can continue to use this as a catapult."
 
The Dons (11-10, 2-4 WCC) will return to action on Tuesday as they open a two-game set against No. 9 Oregon.
 
San Francisco found itself behind again early after a miscue by Nico Giarratano.
 
The freshman bobbled a groundball that allowed Parker Starr to reach base. Two batters later, he was driven in on a single by Brock Whitney to take a 1-0 lead. BYU scored again on a sacrifice fly and went up by two.
 
"It's just one of those things. We make the error, right after the error we walk a guy and we give up a base hit. We make three mistakes in the first inning. That compounds itself into two runs," Giarratano said. "We bring that upon ourselves by not playing the right kind of defense. We've got to start playing better defense at the beginning of the game."
 
Those were the last runs the Dons surrendered on the afternoon.
 
Goodman went six innings and gave up two runs, both unearned, on four hits to pick up his second win of the season.
 
"I thought Grant threw the ball well," Giarratano said. "Especially in the first inning, if we just catch the ball clean, he's out of the first inning and they don't score and he probably cruises not giving up any runs."
 
San Francisco began to chip away in the second when Bob Cruikshank drove in Brendan Hendriks with a sacrifice fly to cut the BYU lead to one.
 
Two innings later, the Dons moved on top. Bradley Zimmer led off with a single, stole second and moved to third on a single by Derek Atkinson. Atkinson then stole second himself to set up second and third with no outs.
 
Hendriks and Cruikshank followed with consecutive ground balls to drive in Zimmer and Atkinson to give USF a 3-2 lead.
 
"We executed today," Giarratano said. "We got a sacrifice bunt down. We got two two-out RBIs, which helps us. We move runners when we're second and third, no outs. Then we score a runner form third base twice today with less than two outs, things we needed to do to get our five runs."
 
The Dons found themselves in a jam in the eighth. BYU got its two first batters on base against Brock Larson and that is when Giarratano went to Ben Graff out of the bullpen. Graff retired the next three batters to hold the 4-2 lead.
 
"He's come into some key situations all year," Giarratano said. "He was fabulous."