THE RUNDOWN
RIVERSIDE, Calif. – The University of San Francisco baseball team battled tough in a 3-2 loss to UC Riverside, giving up the winning run in the bottom of the eighth inning.
The Dons took an early lead in the first inning through a double by
Ross Puskarich that scored
Riley Helland, who singled to start a string of three hits for USF. The Highlanders grabbed a run of their own in the bottom half of the first inning through a solo homerun from Colby Schultz.
Two innings the later the Highlanders were able to get to the USF starting pitcher,
Thomas Ponticelli, through a one out single from Schlutz who was then driven in by a double to right field by Dean Miller. Following this one run inning, Ponticelli went on to throw four scoreless innings, striking out three in that stretch.
The Dons tied the game up in the top of the fifth inning, getting three consecutive singles from
Jonathan Allen, Helland and
Michael Perri. Allen crossed the plate on the third single of the inning from Perri to knot the game at 2-2.
In the eighth inning, the Dons pitching staff got into trouble with an early walk conceded by
Scott Parker, who came on in relief for Ponticelli. Jenkins came on for Parker and immediately got two quick outs. Riverside's Yeager Taylor reached on a throwing error, which allowed the runner at first to advance to third. The runner at third later scored through a single from Cade Peters to give the Highlanders a 3-2 lead, and win.
COACHES QUOTES
Head coach Nino Giarratano
On the today's performance
"We just didn't execute offensively today, had a chance to make it a 2-0, 3-0 game in the first inning. Then in the second and third innings we had a chance to add to our lead but were unable to, which came back and hurt us today. Ponti pitched well and going into the seventh in a 2-2 game, which should have been 5-2 if we made contact with runners in scoring position, but we struggled. Then you walk a guy to lead off the eighth inning and made an error with two outs to extend the inning, and any time you do that you're bound to give up a run."
On the hitting performance today
"I was very excited by the way
Michael Perri swung the bat today, he was great today with some really solid at-bats with runners in scoring position. Jon Allen put some solid at-bats together for us, and Villaroman did his job. We just struggled in the middle of the order, 4-5-6. I'm glad we came back from a 2-1 deficit and glad we hung in there, but thought we had a better opportunity to win the game today."
On tomorrow's doubleheader
I hope we can defend better earlier in the game and pitch just as well as today, then who knows, we could win game one and that helps us heading into game two. Any time you lose the first game, late in the game, you need to regain some momentum heading into the final two games of the series.
GAME STATS
- Ponticelli added another five strikeouts, which puts him at a team leading 21 Ks on the season.
- Scoring for a team leading seventh time this season was Jonathan Allen.
- With his RBI today, Perri now has eight on the season, to put him as the team leader in that category.
- Puskarich's RBI in today's game is his third run batted in on the season.
NEXT UP
Following the postponement of last night's first game, the Dons and Highlanders will play a doubleheader tomorrow with the first game slated to begin at 12 p.m.
