Utah Utes baseball: Aztecs jump on Utes early, take series 2-1

After splitting the first two games of their series, Utah and San Diego State each badly wanted a victory Saturday afternoon.

It didn't take long for one team to reach out and grab this one.

The Aztecs put the game away early by scoring five runs in the first inning and three in the second and coasted to a 9-3 victory Saturday at Franklin Covey Field.

"I'm disappointed in the way we played today," said Utah coach Bill Kinneberg. "We weren't ready to play early and didn't get very good pitching. We got in a hole and didn't make an adjustment offensively to get back in the ballgame. You've got to win two to stay in the race."'

On the other side SDSU coach Tony Gwynn, the Major League Baseball Hall-of-Famer, was thrilled to get out of town with a series victory after his Aztecs lost to Utah 7-5 Friday night. His team had opened MWC play last week with a three-game sweep of BYU in San Diego.

"After losing yesterday, we definitely wanted to win the series today so it was nice to do that," Gwynn said. "Yesterday we fell behind and couldn't get anything going until late in the game. Today we talked about trying to put some runs on the board early. Little do you think you're going to put five runs on the board early."

The Aztecs (12-10, 5-1) jumped on Ute starter Andrew Wilding early as Nick Romero homered after leadoff batter Pat Colwell was hit by a pitch and Troy Hanzawa singled. Then with two outs, the Aztecs produced three straight singles and a Ute error pushed in another run.

In the second inning, Brandon Glover singled in a pair of runs and a sacrifice fly sent home another run, making it 8-0.

Utah pitchers Stephen Streich and Geoff Wolfgramm kept the Aztecs off the board for six innings and the Utes added a run in the third and a pair in the sixth as Cody Guymon tripled, Dustin Hennis singled him in and Nick Kuroczko double in a run. For the game, Hennis, Kuroczko, Austin Jones and Corey Shimada each had two hits for the Utes.

The Utes (7-12, 1-2) play at Utah Valley State on Tuesday in Orem before meeting Air Force in a three-game series Friday through Sunday.

"We're very young — we started four freshman today," said Kinneberg. "We're going to go through some ups and downs. My main concern is that we try to get better every day. I don't know that we met that goal today."

---

E-mail: sor@desnews.com