SAN FRANCISCO — One last start.
One last chance to leave it all out on the field.
And that's exactly what outgoing senior
Landen Bourassa did on Friday.
Standing on the mound for the last time as a member of the University of San Francisco baseball team, Bourassa threw a complete game while only allowing one run as he led the Dons to a series-opening, 5-1, non-conference victory over Santa Clara at Benedetti Diamond.
Bourassa didn't allow a run until the seventh, and it took consecutive deep fly balls to right field to score Jason Dicochea, who had led off the inning with the Broncos' third double of the game. He retired 13 of the last 15 batters he faced, struck out five and only walked one, and had four 1-2-3 innings, including the ninth, which took him only seven pitches to wrap up his second complete game of the year.
"It's fitting," said San Francisco head coach
Nino Giarratano. "The day belongs to Landen. It's amazing when you work as hard as he does and you give as much as he's given to the program, that's what he deserved. I was hoping they were all zeros, but he deserves that. He earned it, he's done it his whole career here and it's been amazing. I'm so proud of him, the way he works, the way he listens, what he's given to us as a program and boy, we're sure gonna miss him."
Bourassa is the first USF pitcher in six years to record multiple complete games in one season. He finishes his 2021 campaign with a 7-4 record, 2.88 ERA and better-than three-to-one strikeouts-to-walks ratio with 75 Ks against only 24 walks in 97 innings pitched. His 16 career victories rank eighth all-time at USF, and his career 2.93 ERA places him sixth in the USF record book.
"It's a hell of a feeling. The only thing I can think about is all the people I've played with over the years, the coaches I've had, the support from my family, it's kind of cool to see it culminate like that. It's super sad to be finishing my time here, but that made it worth it. I can't complain."
The Dons' offense, meanwhile, was up against its own strong arm on the mound in Santa Clara's Cole Kitchen. Kitchen was perfect through the first three innings, throwing only 15 pitches in the first two frames and getting through the first three in 30. But USF (24-27) finally made him work in the fourth and broke through. Kitchen threw over 20 pitches in the fourth inning after three very efficient innings.
Jack Winkler got the Dons' first hit in the process on a wind-and-sun ball into left field that landed safely for a triple. He'd get the Dons on the board when
Jordan Vujovich followed a ball up the middle that was mishandled by Dicochea, allowing Winkler to score and make it 1-0.
That single run and single hit in the fourth got the Dons going. They'd score four runs on five hits in the bottom of the fifth to go up 5-0 and get Kitchen out of the game in spite of his dominant start to the day.
Ryan Davis homered to the opposite field gap to make it 2-0,
Luke Keaschall doubled down the left field line to bring home a run,
Darius Foster popped up into shallow left field, which allowed
Nick Yovetich to scamper home on a sacrifice fly, and Winkler singled through the left side for the Dons' fifth run – part of his 3-for-4 day at the plate.
"When Winkler got to that fastball down the left field line and then obviously when Davis got the home run then everyone started believing and then we just started swinging, we relaxed a little bit, we started getting to the fastball, we stopped swinging at the changeup down," said Giarratano. "This is an offensive club. If you get through them three times without giving up runs, you've done something really special. They weren't grinding out at-bats in the first three innings, but from the fourth inning on they really started to put together some at-bats that were indicative of their season."
As for Bourassa, he now will watch the final days of his senior season from the bench. He still has two games to set examples, teach the younger players and be a leader for USF.
"It's all about the future," said Bourassa. "It's all about the next pitch and trying to do the best I can to help guys get prepared for next season and getting the young guys up to speed and making sure that they're aware that they're gonna be the leaders next year."
The series continues on Saturday with game two in Santa Clara. The series finale will be back on The Hilltop at 1 p.m. on Sunday. Fans can find all live coverage links on USFDons.com.
