No. 8 Trojans win first away series at Cal Poly, 2-1

No. 8 USC demonstrated its ability to dominate on the road this past weekend, taking the first away series of the season 2-1 against the Cal Poly Mustangs.

The 19-5 Trojans have quickly climbed up the rankings into the top 10 during the first half of the season thanks to the team’s explosive offensive play and impressive starts from the pitching staff.

In the first game of the series against the Mustangs Friday night, the Trojans suffered a disappointing 5-4 loss because of a costly fielding error with two outs in the bottom of the sixth inning which led to four unearned runs. The Trojans led the Mustangs, 1-0, through the first five innings and, with two runs scored in the top of the seventh thanks to a triple by junior Timmy Robinson, came within one run of Cal Poly.

USC was unable to come away with another run, however, as Cal Poly reliever Danny Zandona came in during the final two innings, retiring the side twice and striking out four.

“I don’t think we’ve played great defense so far and we need to get better at that,” head coach Dan Hubbs said. “We need to do a much better job of getting ourselves out of a jam on the mound. If the starter goes six, when the reliever comes in, we’re doing a poor job of getting ourselves out of a jam when there’s a man on second and third with one out.”

Wasting no time sulking on the tough loss, the Trojans came charging back on Saturday with a 13-0 shutout over Cal Poly, tallying 13 runs on 15 hits, the second highest number of hits they have had in a game this season.

Hubbs attributes his team’s offensive success on the ability to advance runners and come up with key hits in big spots.

“I think we’ve done a good job at finding our pitch and not trying to do too much with it,” Hubbs said. “We’ve done a real good job of trying to stay in the middle of the field and stay over the ball, hard ground balls and low line drives as opposed to high fly balls. The kids have bought into it and it worked really well for us.”

The Trojans were led on the mound by junior Kyle Twomey, who had a strong six-inning, two-hit start. Offensively, the Trojans took a 2-0 lead in the fourth inning and never looked back, adding four runs in the sixth and seven in the eighth to bring their lead to 13-0.

Six different Trojans had       multihit outings, led by redshirt junior Bobby Stahel with three hits and junior David Oppenheim with four runs on two hits.

Hubbs feels his team responded well to Friday’s loss with big numbers on Saturday.

“After [Friday’s] game, we just talked about getting back to what we do: play good defense, try to stay low and hard with our contact and throw strikes,” Hubbs said. “I think we did a really good job of that. I was really impressed at the way our team battled back after losing a tough one in a game we felt we could’ve and should’ve won, but we really bounced back and put it to them the next two days.”

On Sunday, the Trojans again handled the Mustangs easily with a 9-2 win. The team got off to an explosive start, scoring four runs in the first, three in the second and two in the fifth.

The Trojans scored nine runs on 12 hits as freshman starter Mitch Hart got it done on the mound, pitching seven solid innings of four-hit, one-run baseball to earn his fifth win of the season. The Trojans played solid small ball throughout the game, with a series of key doubles and singles by Stahel, senior Garrett Stubbs, Robinson, Oppenheim and redshirt sophomore Reggie Southall.

Throughout the weekend, USC capitalized on Cal Poly’s many mistakes, resulting in many of the Trojans runs. In the three games, the Mustangs gave up two errors, three errors and three errors, respectively. Also, Cal Poly faced a lot of problems within their pitching staff, needing to pull starters as early as the first inning.

“We were patient and able to get our pitch,” Hubbs said. “On a couple of our errors, it directly led to runs. In case and point on Sunday we were up 5-1 and they made a flip to first base which flew over the first baseman’s head and we were able to score two runs which would’ve been the end of the inning. The pitchers gave us a lot of pitches we could hit.”

USC’s hot streak on offensive has lead to an increase in confidence and flexibility for the pitching staff, who has struggled at time in terms of relief pitching.

“Our staff knows if they make a mistake we can always come back from it,” Hubbs said. “I think mentally it’s huge for pitchers to be able to attack the strike zone and know that if they do give up a run or two that we still have a chance to come back. In the game we lost, when we put up a crooked number in multiple innings, it’s hard to come back from that. I think the pitchers feel really good that our guys can come back on offense if we give up a run or two.”

Looking at the week ahead, the Trojans will host Pepperdine tonight and travel to Seattle to face Washington this weekend.

Hubbs believes that the Trojans can maintain their impressive start to the season if they concentrate on making the appropriate improvements.

“We need to play better defense, continuing to work on our short game and find that guy out of the bullpen who’s going to be able to get us out of jams,” Hubbs said. “If we can do those three things, we’re going to be really hard to beat.”