UC San Diego Club Baseball played Arizona State Club Baseball in a triple-header on Sunday, 2/12, due to rain cancelling Saturday’s game. In the first game, Senior Yousef Koutnik started on the mound for the Tritons and did his best to keep the nationally ranked Sun Devils off of the scoreboard. He was very effective through the first 5 innings, striking out 7 Sun Devils while only allowing one unearned run on one hit and one walk. Things blew up quickly for Koutnik and the Tritons, though, as some shaky defense and relentless offense from ASU allowed them to score 8 runs in the 6th inning to jump out to a 9-0 lead. UCSD’s bats finally woke up in the 6th to score 2 runs, highlighted by Hunter Woodruff’s second triple of the game. Unfortunately, this was all UCSD could scratch across and wound up losing the game 9-2.
In the next game, Yuki Komine pitched for the Tritons and did his part to keep the Sun Devil offense in check allowing only 4 runs in 5 solid innings of work. Some very smart offense from Nick Walsh and Hunter Woodruff allowed the Tritons to jump out to a 1-0 lead in the first inning but this would quickly vanish. ASU matched with one in the second, two more in the 4th, and one in the 5th to establish is 4-1 lead on UCSD. ASU would add one more run in the top of the 7th and managed to shut down the Triton bats for the remainder of the game to win 5-1.
In the final game of the series, Senior Shane Aldas did his best on the mound to salvage at least one win for UCSD on the weekend. The baseball gods, however, were not with Shane or the Tritons at all on Sunday as a few “seeing-eye” singles and bloop hits off of weak contact helped Arizona State score 3 runs in the 2nd inning and 4 runs in the 5th which would prove to plenty of run support for their starting pitcher as the Triton offense again had a tough time getting things going. UCSD battled back to score 3 runs in the 5th inning, closing the gap to 8-3 but the umpire would end the game after the rally due to not enough light left to play the game and the Triton’s lost the final game of the series 8-3 in a shortened 5 inning game.
UCSD will look to bounce back from the rough weekend by playing in UCSB’s “Carnival Classic” Tournament over the President’s Day weekend and then by taking on Grand Canyon University in Phoenix on the weekend of February 25/26th.
