SAN FRANCISCO — As things continue to settle for the University of San Francisco baseball team, the wins continue to keep coming.
A strong starting pitching performance, shutdown relief, a battling offense and minimal mistakes on defense led to the Dons winning their third game in a row Thursday – a 4-3 series-opening triumph over Loyola Marymount at Benedetti Diamond.
Landen Bourassa (2-2) matched his season-long outing with seven strong innings Thursday. He allowed one earned run (three total) while striking out four and only walking one.
Alex Pham earned his first save of the year and eighth of his career with two innings of shutout relief in the eighth and ninth. He struck out five of the seven batters he faced, only allowing a leadoff single in the ninth.
"Nice that Landen was able to give us seven innings, really nice that the offense was able to come back after they put up three, we put up four. I didn't think we executed very well offensively late in the game, we had plenty of chances and didn't do it. That's what it's supposed to look like – one walk, nine punchouts, offense gets some big hits; goes nine hits, we only make one error on a ground ball, that's what we're supposed to be doing right now."
Loyola Marymount (9-15, 2-5 WCC) broke through against Bourassa in the fourth after leaving runners in scoring position in each of the first three innings. A leadoff solo home run by Alec Cargin got the scoring going, and a two-out, two-run triple by Kenny Oyama made it 3-0. A USF defensive error in the inning extended the Lions' life at the plate, and they took advantage with two unearned runs scoring on the Oyama triple.
San Francisco answered right back in the bottom half of the fourth, getting its first four batters and five of the first six to reach safely. After
Jordan Vujovich's leadoff double,
Jacob Munoz followed with a towering two-run shot that hit above the high yellow tape in right-center field, making it 3-2. Munoz won a 10-pitch battle in sending his fifth homer of the year high up on the net. He fouled off four consecutive pitches before the long ball.
Jacob Westerman and
Ryan Davis both followed with singles, and
Thomas McCarthy sacrificed them both over to give USF runners in scoring position with only one out. That set up
Nick Yovetich's go-ahead, two-run double out to deep right-center field. Yovetich fought back from being behind in the count, 1-2, to put the Dons ahead.
"Hopefully our best baseball is ahead of us right now. Finally, it feels nice to win game one and give you some breathing room here to win the series. We still gotta do our job with the starting pitching and the offense has gotta do a better job. Their guy is good tomorrow and we've got our work cut out for us."
Game two of the series is scheduled for a 1 p.m. first pitch Friday. Sophomore right-hander
Josh Mollerus will throw against LMU's CJ Fernandezees. Fans can find all live coverage links on USFDons.com.
