Arizona Baseball: Offense comes to life in 11-5 win over Ball State

TUCSON, AZ – Resuming action on Monday afternoon in their four-game series against Ball State (2-2), Arizona Baseball (2-2) emerged victorious with the 11-5 win.

It was a busy weekend for the Arizona Baseball team, as the highly touted Wildcats took to the diamond for the first time in 348 days to take on Ball State within the friendly confines of Hi Corbett Field.

Coming away with the win on Friday evening, unfortunately, the next two games wouldn’t go so well for the Wildcats as mistakes and poor pitching ultimately doomed Arizona into losing both games by a combined score of 13-9.

Arizona Wildcats

Needing a stellar performance in the final matchup, the Wildcats would turn to true freshman righty, TJ Nichols to close this one out.

The former high school standout from Oakmont High School in Roseville, CA came in, delivering a phenomenal performance, pitching five, sterling innings, surrendering just two runs on seven hits to ultimately pick up the win.

Dawson Netz and Preston Price would come on in relief in this one. However, it was Netz that would run into some trouble early in the eighth inning, before being replaced by Price later in the inning, shutting the door on the Cardinals’ attempt at another comeback.

Despite late, rocky pitching by Arizona Baseball, it was the bats that finally came alive to help deliver the win in this one.

Despite seeing their inconsistencies over the previous few games, Arizona Baseball finally saw their offense come to life in this one.

Starting things off early on, it was Jacob Blas that would get things going for Arizona, as Jacob would lay down a perfect bunt in the bottom of the first inning to score Kobe Kato and make it 1-0.

The very next inning, Jacob Berry would double to center scoring Donta’ Williams, before an eventual sacrifice fly out by Ryan Holgate would then score Berry to make it 3-0 after the first two innings.

Ball State would plate two in the third, but luckily it was Berry coming up big again, as he would drive in his second run on the day, a single to make it 4-2.

Thanks to timely hitting and opportune baserunning, Arizona would plate three more in the bottom of the fourth, and then score a run in each of the following innings to pace themselves to the eventual 11-5 win.

The Standouts:

• Berry finished his day a perfect 3-3 from the plate, with two RBI’s.
• Holgate would end his day going 1-2 with two RBI’s.
• Nichols would pick up his first win in the first start of his career.

On Deck for Arizona:

With the Wildcats winning and evening the series with Ball State, Arizona improves to 2-2 on the year and will return to action on Thursday evening at Hi Corbett Field to take on the Lions of Southeastern Louisiana. You can catch the action on the Pac-12 Arizona Live Stream-3.