Ethan Hedges fulfilled every kid’s dream Saturday night.

With two outs, two men on in the bottom of the ninth for USC baseball, the sophomore infielder laced a baseball into the left-center gap to drive in redshirt sophomore infielder Bryce Martin-Grudzielanek, walking it off for the first Trojan win of the season during a three-game set with Portland.

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“When you haven’t won a game and you get a walk-off, it’s emotional, it’s exciting. So just happy for the fellas,” said Head Coach Andy Stankiewicz in an interview with the Daily Trojan after the series concluded Sunday.

Hedges’ hammer gave USC (2-5) some much-needed momentum, propelling it to a series victory, as the Trojans finished off the two-win weekend with a 10-4 win over the Portland Pilots (3-3) Sunday at Orange County Great Park — the Trojans’ first series this season.

“It feels good. This is what we’ve been training for,” said sophomore catcher Jacob Galloway in an interview with the Daily Trojan after Sunday’s win. “It feels good to start to execute what we’ve been working for. Obviously every weekend we’re just trying to win series, and we just got to keep it going.”

USC — after going a combined 16-125 at the plate across its first four games, all losses — finally found its bats against the Pilots, recording 29 hits against Portland across the three games.

“There’s some buy-in and I think some guys are starting to understand we gotta take our line drives back up the middle, we gotta take our backside base hits,” Stankiewicz said. “A big part was [assistant coach Travis] Jewett, he got the boys together and [said], ‘Now, enough’s enough. Let’s start to use the middle of the diamond again and jab. Just pepper line drives, pepper hard ground balls the other way and then a big one will come.’”

Despite getting eight of the 29 hits in the Friday night matchup, the Trojans could not bring any of those runners to the plate. They were then shut out for the first time since the early goings of the 2021 season in a 4-0 loss.

For the first time this season, the Trojans found their way to the plate in their Saturday matchup, bringing six players home to match the run total of the previous four games combined.

Hedges was put into a walk-off position, though, as the USC bullpen couldn’t put the game away. Senior pitcher Tyler Stromsborg pitched through six innings unscathed but gave up two earned runs in the seventh as the Pilots knocked him out of the game. The ‘pen couldn’t stop the bleeding and allowed Portland to tie it up in the top of the eighth.

Then, Hedges happened.

“Just exciting, obviously, to break whatever funk we were in, super excited for it, but also, that’s also our expectation,” Galloway said. “We’re obviously very happy, but that’s what we are expecting going forward.” 

The walk off seemed to add some juice Sunday, as every Trojan in the lineup reached base in the rubber match. The Trojans marched to the tune of 10 runs, and it was the old heads in the lineup — there were only two players of junior or senior standing in Sunday’s starting nine — who carried the weight.

Senior infielder Ryan Jackson and senior outfielder Carson Wells each had two RBIs as part of a stellar weekend for two of the most seasoned players on the team; both players notched a hit in each game across the weekend.

“The older guys gotta announce themselves, they gotta have a presence, and they gotta help the young guys move along,” Stankiewicz said. “I think the whole unit as a team offensively earlier was pressing, trying to do too much instead of just playing easy, playing freed up.”

The Trojans returned a lot of innings in the rotation from Stromsborg and junior pitcher Caden Aoki — Friday night’s starting pitcher. The same can not be said for the rest of a relatively inexperienced team — three freshmen made it into the starting lineup across the weekend, and players like Galloway, sophomore catcher Luca DiPaolo and sophomore infielder KaiKea Harrison are stepping into larger roles this season.

The mix of youth and experience was on display over the weekend, as neither group truly dominated the stat sheet over the other.

One player who’s both young and experienced is sophomore outfielder Austin Overn. The sophomore had a putrid start to the year, going 1-19 in the first five games, but is coming off a 2023 season where he led the Trojans’ qualified hitters in average.

Overn is starting to make strides toward his 2023 form, notching two hits between Saturday and Sunday, while scoring 4 runs.

“He’s a catalyst, we need him on base, we need him on first base, we need him on the base paths creating pressure,” Stankiewicz said. “Good strides this weekend, still got a ways to go and I think he knows that as well. He has a tendency to give at-bats away. We gotta get him to understand ball four is a good thing.”

The Trojans will look to carry their momentum into a Tuesday night matchup with Michigan (2-5) at Page Stadium — another home field for USC this season — followed by a trip to Arlington, Texas, for the Kubota College Baseball Series this weekend.