PROVO, Utah — It was a wild start to an important West Coast Conference series Thursday with a game that featured almost as many errors as it did hits, as host BYU came from behind to narrowly edge the University of San Francisco baseball team, 8-7, in 10 innings at Miller Park.
 
San Francisco (5-15, 1-3 WCC) led by scores of 5-0 and 7-3 Thursday, but the defense committed seven errors and the Cougars (8-11, 4-0 WCC) scored four unearned runs to catch up. The Dons also capitalized on four BYU errors, scoring five unearned runs themselves. Jordan Vujovich hit two home runs and collected five RBIs for USF in the defeat.
 
"I don't think anyone could ever question the toughness and the desire of this team," said San Francisco head coach Nino Giarratano. "It's just the execution. It's simple defensive things that we didn't do today. We had a lot of tough breaks at the end."
 
Walks nagged USF again on Thursday. San Francisco issued 11 walks, with two of them scoring and five getting into scoring position and clogging up the base paths. The Cougars stranded 15 base runners, eight in scoring position – six of those from the sixth inning on, including leaving the bases loaded twice. They went only 2 for 16 (.125) with runners in scoring position.
 
The Dons put a five-spot on the scoreboard in the second inning to jump out to a 5-0 lead. Back-to-back two-out errors by the Cougars gave USF base runners. An RBI single by Brandon Greim scored the first run of the game. Vujovich's first homer of the night followed, a three-run shot that made it 4-0. Jack Winkler followed with a two-out RBI double and the Dons were up big at 5-0.
 
Vujovich's second homer of the night came in the fourth, a two-run shot that made it 7-3 at the time. BYU got two unearned runs in the third and Peyton Cole's solo homer in the fourth made it 7-4. Two more walks and another error led to two BYU runs in the sixth, making it 7-6. And three walks in the eighth, including one with the bases loaded, allowed BYU to tie it at 7-7.
 
Alex Pham put on a heroic effort in relief Thursday, doing just about everything. He threw nearly 100 pitches in four innings of relief, striking out five and only allowing two hits. He also had his first collegiate at-bat in the top of the ninth after the Dons had lost the designated hitter spot. He tried to run out a soft groundball, diving head first into first base. In the top of the 10th, he was the runner placed at second base as the international tiebreaker runner.
 
"Alex Pham is just phenomenal," said Giarratano. "He battled in his at-bat, he dived into first base, but you can't teach a guy not to compete. He's just a battler, man. He just got after it."

Game two of the series is scheduled for 3 p.m. PDT Friday. Fans can find all live coverage links at USFDons.com.