Cougars rally in ninth to down Aztecs

PROVO — Brandon Taylor may not know where he is this morning, but his team is certainly glad he decided to play on Friday night.

With a head of stitches inserted about the same time BYU and San Diego State began the second game of their series, Taylor helped the Cougars get back into the game with a grand slam in the fourth inning.

But Marcos Villezcas and Apana Nakayama were the men in blue who finished off the Aztecs in a ninth-inning comeback and a 13-12 win.

Down 12-9 in the bottom of the ninth, Villezcas hit a two-run single to put the Cougars within one, and he scored the winning run off of a two-out line drive from Nakayama to the wall.

Prior to the start of the game, Taylor and his team were running sprints in the outfield when he was hit by a ball off the bat of a San Diego State player during warmups. Taylor was rushed to Utah Valley Hospital and replaced by Kevin Sloan in the starting lineup, but he returned to the park sometime during the first inning and was in the field by the third inning.

Batting out of his usual place in the lineup and with new number on his back, Taylor struck out in his first at-bat but had a chance for redemption the next time around. With two outs and the bases loaded, Taylor sent a Bruce Billings pitch to left-center field for his second grand slam of the season and put BYU within one run of the lead.

Taylor had a chance for even more heroics again in the bottom of the seventh with the bases loaded. Facing a full count, he fouled off one pitch before watching a called third strike blow by him.

The Aztecs got four runs on the board in the first inning off of the first two of five BYU errors. San Diego State's continued to find holes in the Cougar defense, collecting 14 hits on the night, including six extra-base hits.

Following Taylor's blast, BYU added two runs in the fifth of a couple RBI doubles from Jeff Hiestand and Ryan Chambers to give the Cougars a 7-6 lead.

San Diego State would regain the edge in the seventh with another four-run inning. Jordan Swaydan's two-RBI triple put the Aztecs back on top, and Swaydan would score on the next play off an RBI single from Sam Pepper. James Guerrero capped things off in the top of the ninth with a two-run home run to give SDSU a three-run cushion for closing pitcher Andres Esquibel that would prove to be not enough in the end.

Both teams went deep into their bullpens throughout the night, using a total of nine pitchers. San Diego State's Ben Coon, who was scheduled to start today's game, even came in to pitch for part of the eighth inning.