After a doubleheader on Saturday, the Aggies bounced back to defeat Washington in Sunday’s series finale at Dobbins Stadium. Overall, the Aggies won three out of the four games to begin the season against a Pac-12 team.
Sophomore Nick Lynch led the Aggies with three RBIs and went 7-16 for an average of .438 over the weekend. Lynch, as well as a number of different players, contributed to the success in the three wins
Friday — UC Davis 8, Washington 4
UC Davis got its first win of the season on Friday against Washington when the Aggies piled on the runs early by scoring three in the first inning.
Senior Mike Mazzara doubled in two runs then later scored on a single by senior Kevin Barker in the first. The early burst set the tone for the rest of the game, as the Aggies never trailed after the frame.
Washington would answer by scoring two runs in the third, but the Aggies scored two runs in the fourth. In the sixth, Washington scored another two runs only to have the Aggies score two runs in the bottom half of the frame.
Both of Mazzara’s hits were doubles and he finished with three RBIs and a run. Junior Harry Stanwyck earned the win by pitching 5-1/3 innings and gave up four runs on eight hits. Sophomore Craig Lanza finished the game and had a solid outing. He allowed only one hit and gave up one walk in 3-1/3 scoreless innings.
Saturday — UC Davis 6, Washington 5 (Game 1)
The day’s first game went all the way to the later innings to be decided, as the Aggies broke the tie late in the game after surrendering a big lead.
Sophomore Evan Heptig had a big game and led the team with clutch hits, driving in four runs on two hits. With the bases loaded in the sixth, he hit his second double to center field to clear the bases and gave the Aggies the five run advantage.
Then UC Davis allowed three runs in the seventh inning and two in the eighth. With the game nodded up at five in the bottom half of the eighth inning, Senior Tino Lipson hit the ball off of third baseman Alex Schmidt’s glove for a single to score a run.
Sophomore Spencer Koopmans threw a quality game by going 6-1/3 solid innings of one run ball to get the win. He surrendered three walks, struck out six batters and gave up only two hits.
Saturday — Washington 3, UC Davis 2 (Game 2)
The Aggies struggled in the second game of the double-header and failed to manufacture enough runs in the shortened game of seven innings.
Coach Matt Vaughn and the rest of the team had a lot of time to prepare for this series, once the schedule was released months ago.
Junior Steven Patterson hit a bases-loaded single to right field to plate two runs, and that was all the offense could generate against a strong outing from Nick Palewicz, who threw five innings to earn the win.
Senior Ben Burke struggled with his command and walked three batters, but only gave up two hits in four innings.
“I’m real happy with them. We’ve pitched real well for the most part. We gave away some runs in that second game early and those were all runs we just gave them, but we’re doing a good job,” Vaughn said. “We could play better defense and I’m a little disappointed on how we finished that second game offensively.”
Saturday — UC Davis 7, Washington 5
Trying to make up for its last effort, UC Davis started the game with energy and it continued throughout the game. The Aggies scored a run in the first and fourth innings, then scored three runs in the fifth and two the following inning.
They collectively had 13 hits and Lynch had three of them, which contributed to driving in two runs.
Freshman Spenser Henderson recorded the win by pitching three innings and allowed two runs on four hits.
LUKE BAE can be reached at sports@theaggie.org.
