Coming into Sunday’s game Oregon had split the first two games of their 3 game weekend series against UC Santa Barbara setting up a Game 3 rubber match to decide the series.
Coach Waz elected to go with the following starting lineup and gave the ball to Cal Scolari who had a rough outing in his last start against Northwestern which was his first start after returning to the team after a battle with the flu.
Through 3 innings the Ducks offence couldn’t get anything going but luckily Scolari was able
to pitch 3 scoreless innings to start the game and keep the Gauchos off the board and keep the game deadlocked at zero.
In the 4th freshmen sensation Angel Laya broke the tie with his team leading 9th home run of the year to give the Ducks a 1-0 lead.
Through the first 3 innings Scolari had to pitch around some base runners but the Duck lead allowed him to really attack the zone in the 4th with his best stuff as he would strike out the side and then follow that up with 1-2-3 innings in the 5th and 6th. All in all it ended up being a marvelous start for Scolari as Tannery Bradley would relive him in the 7th.
Bradley took the ball from Scolari and continued to keep the Gauchos frustrated at the plate as he would pitch scoreless innings in the 7th and 8th striking out 3, only allowing one hit, and no walks.
In the 9th the Ducks looked to add some much needed insurance as they were still nursing a 1 run lead.
Ryan Cooney got things started in a good way with a triple which was followed by a hit by pitch to put runners on the corners and one one out.
But on a Dominic Hellman grounder Cooney attempted to come home and was thrown out. Still the Ducks had runners on 3rd and 2nd now with 2 outs.
With the bases loaded tafter a HBP the Gauchos pitcher would uncork a wild pitch which would allow Jax Gimenez to come home and finally give Oregon it’s 2nd run of the game.
The Ducks were unable to stretch across any additional runs though which meant Devin Bell would only have one runs to work with to secure the series win for Oregon in the 9th.
Bell would allow one walk but otherwise had no other trouble setting down UC Santa Barbara which would give the Ducks the Sunday and series win to improve there record to 23-5 and 4-1 on the California road trip
Obviously the story of Sunday was the pitching which allowed the Ducks to pick up a win only scoring two runs. Scolari had his best start of the season which was great to see after his previous 2 were a bit shaky. Tanner Bradley continues to be a super reliable option out of the pen as his two scoreless innings brought his season ERA down to 1.25.
The Ducks are back in action on Tuesday when they take on Portland at home before heading to Ann Arbor to face Michigan and resume B1G play.
