Ninth-inning rally falls short

Saturday, March 11

Eugene, Ore.

2:05 PM

University of Oregon

10-4, 1-1

UCLA

11-3, 1-1

UCLA

Oregon

03/11/23 | Baseball

Box Score Box Score: #13 UCLA 8, Oregon 7 Photo Gallery

EUGENE – Oregon hit back-to-back-to-back home runs in the bottom of the ninth inning to pull within one run but the rally was cut short on a sliding catch in the right-center field gap that gave No. 13 UCLA an 8-7 win in Pac-12 Conference action on Saturday at PK Park.

How It Happened: Trailing 8-2 entering the bottom of the ninth inning, freshman Jackson Jaha sparked the Ducks' rally with a one-out pinch-hit double in his first career at-bat. Tanner Smith made it 8-3 with an RBI single that scored Jaha before Rikuu Nishida struck out to put the Bruins (11-3, 1-1 Pac-12) one out away from evening the series at one game apiece after the Ducks on won the series opener on Friday night.

Oregon (10-4, 1-1 Pac-12) would not go quietly. Sabin Ceballos crushed a ball to dead center field for a two-run home run cutting UCLA's lead to three. Two pitches later, Drew Cowley made it a two-run game with a solo shot over the right-center wall. Jacob Walsh followed with another bomb over the right-center field wall.

It looked like Oregon would keep the rally going. Colby Shade lined a shot into the gap in right-center field, but UCLA right-fielder JonJon Vaughns made a sliding catch to rob Shade of extra bases and end the game.

UCLA (11-3, 1-1) built a six-run lead scoring single runs in the second and fourth before putting four on the board in the top of the fifth. Oregon closed the gap with single runs in both the fifth and sixth.

Shade singled to lead off the fifth and advanced to second on a fielder's choice before coming around to score on a Bennett Thompson double. The Ducks made it 6-2 in the sixth when Rikuu Nishida scored on a wild pitch after singling to lead off the inning.

UCLA tacked on two critical insurance runs in the top of the eighth with its third home run of the day.

Box Score Notes: Seven of the last 10 games between the two teams have been decided by one run … Walsh has homered in back-to-back games, the first Duck to do so since Anthony Hall vs. UCLA and Ball State last season (April 4 & 8) … Oregon's three consecutive home runs was a first for the program since its reinstatement for the 2009 season … Oregon hadn't hit back-to-back home runs since Jack Scanlon and Gavin Grant did it at USC on April 17, 2021 … That game was also the last time Oregon hit three home runs in the same inning (not consecutively) … Ceballos (4-for-5, HR, 2 RBI, 1 R) become the first Duck with four hits in a game since Smith did it vs. San Francisco on March 29, 2022 … Ceballos now has three multi-hit games this year and two multiple-RBI games … Jaha's first career hit was also Oregon's second successfully pinch hit this season … Cowley (2-for-5, HR, RBI) had his second multi-hit game of the season and the 22nd of his career … Oregon has hit multiple home runs in each of its last four games, the longest such streak since an eight-game streak last season (March 13-March 27).

On Deck: The two teams will play the rubber match on Sunday at 12:05 p.m. at PK Park.

Quotes:

Head Coach Mark Wasikowski
Overall thoughts on the game and late comeback:
"Well we lost 8-7 and so the bottom line is we lost at the end of the game. The guys showed fight and came back and expect that as a team. They are really good and talented. That's what's disappointing is we had some at-bats earlier in the game, we didn't need a base hit or anything like that to score guys and if we came through a couple of those times we would have won the game there in the last inning. So it was a bit disappointing that we were not able to come through on some of those at-bats earlier in the game. That just required ball-in-play type thing, or sac fly. That was the overall difference in the game. Overall, we didn't pitch well enough to win a baseball game and that was the story today."