About 10 minutes after USC completed a three-game series sweep of Arizona on Saturday with a 10-9 win, the Trojans huddled in left field for a brief meeting.
Visibly fired up, coach Dan Hubbs addressed his team and congratulated the Trojans on an excellent weekend. Once the head man walked away, the rest of the team started jumping up and down, hooting and hollering.
It was a strikingly different scene a week ago.
At that point, Arizona had just swept Oregon for its sixth straight Pac-12 win. The Ducks met at nearly the exact same spot where the Trojans celebrated, but hung out for longer and weren’t nearly as happy.
Welcome to life in the Pac-12, where glory can turn to agony in one short week.
“We were playing well last weekend, and then we had a couple of hiccups this weekend,” said UA second baseman Scott Kingery, who went 3 for 5 with two runs scored. “That’s just how it goes in this conference; everyone is after everyone.”
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After dropping the first two to the Trojans, it looked like the Wildcats might be able to salvage the finale early in Saturday's game.
After USC scored one in the first, Arizona plated two runs in the second when J.J. Matijevic came through with an RBI double and Cody Ramer, making just his second start of the season, singled in a run.
Arizona extended its lead in the third, when Bobby Dalbec hit a three-run home run to center field to make it 5-1.
But USC responded, as it did all series.
The Trojans erupted for seven runs in the fourth to take an 8-5 lead. It was USC’s second seven-run inning in as many games and knocked starter Tyger Talley out of the game after just 3º innings.
Talley gave up seven earned runs and eight hits.
The junior’s shaky performance continued a troubling trend of poor pitching for the Wildcats.
Thursday starter Cody Hamlin was the only starter able to work into the seventh inning. He gave up four runs and seven hits.
Robby Medel followed on Friday and was knocked out after a third of an inning.
On the weekend, Arizona pitchers surrendered 27 runs and 41 hits.
“Oh, my God, starting pitcher,” Lopez responded when asked what his biggest concern from the weekend was. “We really took some steps back this weekend. Up until this weekend, I thought the pitching had been pretty good. I had been pleased with it.”
Even with the shoddy pitching, the UA still had its chances late.
After USC scored a run in the fifth to take a 9-6 lead, Arizona responded with two runs in the seventh to cut it to a one-run game. In the eighth, the Wildcats finally came all the way back when Tyler Krause scored Justin Behnke on an RBI groundout.
Dalbec had a chance to give the Wildcats the lead heading into the ninth, but struck out to end the eighth.
In the ninth, Dalbec, who came in to pitch in the eighth, walked the first batter of the inning, Timmy Robinson. The Trojans sacrificed Robinson to second and Dalbec got the next batter to ground out to first, which moved Robinson to third.
David Oppenheim then hit a slow roller to Kevin Newman at shortstop, who couldn’t field it with his bare hand. Oppenheim was credited with an infield single to give USC a 10-9 lead.
In the bottom half of the inning, the UA got back-to-back two-out singles from Zach Gibbons and Ramer to put two on with two outs for Behnke. But the UA’s leadoff hitter hit a soft liner to shortstop Reggie Southall for the final out of the series.
“As I told our club, the last inning exemplifies the difference right now between the two clubs,” Lopez said. “Thursday night was a good ballgame, but what I saw the last two days was a little more toughness on their end than ours. I think toughness leads to efficiency, and they were efficient.”
The UA will try to get back on track next weekend with a series in Phoenix against Arizona State. The Wildcats will then travel to Oregon State to complete a tough nine-game stretch of league play.
“We knew coming into this that we had a couple of tough weekends coming up,” said Kingery, who went 10 for 15 in the series and is now batting .477 on the season. “This just proves everyone is out here to play. The schedule is going to be difficult coming up, so we have to fine-tune some things here.”
