The USC baseball team wrapped up its first series sweep of the season with a commanding 7-2 victory over Nevada on Sunday. The victory followed a walk-off win on Saturday and a 3-1 win on Friday for the Trojans at home.
On Friday, USC fell behind early on a two-out solo home run but responded in the third inning as redshirt junior right fielder Jamal O’Guinn drove in redshirt senior shortstop Tyler Pritchard to tie the game.
Nevada redshirt junior right hander Jake Jackson hit two Trojan batters in a row to begin the sixth inning, and redshirt junior third baseman Ben Ramirez followed with a single to load the bases with nobody out. The table was set for USC’s offense so well at that point that freshman catcher Garret Guillemette drove in a run and broke the tie despite grounding into a double play.
Redshirt freshman left fielder Tyresse Turner scored on a throwing error after stealing third base in the eighth inning to give the Trojans all of the cushion they would need. Freshman right hander Nate Clow secured the two-run victory with a 1-2-3 ninth inning, snapping his team’s three game losing streak.
Coming in fresh after the win, USC got off to a very hot start on Saturday, starting with a solo shot from Turner in the fourth inning to open the score. Redshirt freshman center fielder Rhylan Thomas drove in a run with an RBI double in the following inning, and would then score on a wild pitch after advancing to third on a sacrifice fly. That big fifth inning would see the Trojans’ lead grow to 3-0.
In the top of the seventh, the bats finally came alive for the Wolf Pack, who had four hits in their first five at bats of the frame, three of which were for extra bases. Redshirt sophomore center fielder Dario Gomez hit his second home run of the series, and Nevada tied the game at three on a one out RBI double from redshirt senior shortstop Wyatt Tilley to knock redshirt sophomore right hander Chandler Champlain out of the game.
The Wolf Pack took the lead in the top of the ninth off a solo home run from Tilley and were three outs away from tying the series.
Instead, the Trojans received some late game heroics in the bottom of the ninth from their leadoff man. After redshirt senior John Thomas reached base as a pinch hitter with a leadoff single, O’Guinn hit a rocket to left center field, just over the outstretched glove of Dario Gomez and over the wall to give USC the walk-off victory.
Trojans head coach Jason Gill was encouraged by the resiliency his team displayed in this matchup.
“Early in the year you want those things to happen,” Gill said. “You want to be down by five and come back and win. You want to have walk-off homers so that when we get into those situations coming up down the road, we never feel like we’re away, because we’ve done it before. So we’ve proven that we can do it, and I think that’s big for us.”
In the series finale, USC rode the long ball to one of their most productive offensive days this season.
Freshman designated hitter Carson Wells knocked in an RBI single to give the Trojans a 1-0 lead in the second, opening the floodgates for his team’s offense.
O’Guinn hit his third home run of the year with a two-out solo shot in the third and Rhylan Thomas followed him up with a deep ball of his own to expand USC’s lead to three.
Guillemette and Nate Clow responded to a successful RBI sacrifice fly from the Wolf Pack with solo home runs of their own in the fifth and sixth innings, respectively. To break things open, Guillemette drove in two runs in the bottom of the sixth with an RBI single to give USC a six-run lead.
Nevada’s bats stayed relatively quiet for the rest of the afternoon and USC earned the 7-2 win and their first three-game winning streak of the season.
Gill used this series as an opportunity to mix things up with his lineup, and decided to move O’Guinn to the leadoff role. That spot did not hamper his ability to create offense for his team, as he still drove in four runs this weekend, including three on two home runs.
Additionally, the Trojans will also be encouraged by Guillemette’s improved production; he entered Sunday’s game with a batting average of .161, and went 2-4 at the plate with a home run and three RBIs.
“We needed to change [the batting order] up,” Gill said. “So I changed it up on Friday, and it worked, so I stuck with it Saturday and Sunday. I don’t know if it’s gonna last the whole year that way, but it certainly worked this weekend.
But perhaps the area where USC looked the strongest this weekend was their starting pitching staff. On Friday, redshirt junior left hander Isaac Esqueda moved past his mistake in the first, and cruised through seven stellar innings for his team. He only surrendered two more hits the entire night and kept Nevada at just one run to earn his first win of the season.
On Sunday, redshirt sophomore Alex Cornwell delivered his best performance of the year, pitching six and two thirds innings, allowing seven hits and just one run to earn the win.
While Champlain struggled in the sixth and allowed Nevada to tie the game on Saturday, he was nothing short of brilliant up until that point. Champlain pitched six perfect innings to start the night, retiring the first 19 batters he faced, four by strikeout.
Gill was very complimentary of his staff’s performance despite the limited practice time the team had together due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“Without having a fall to practice and work on things, which is when you typically do it, we’ve been going through that in the first four weeks of learning how to get outs with what their stuff is,” he said. “I’m very proud of their effort this weekend, it’s big for us, and we just have to ride that momentum. Our bullpen is getting stronger as well because of their experiences that they are getting to have, too.”
The Trojans will look to ride the momentum they gained this weekend into their first conference matchups of the season, starting with a three game set at Washington on Friday at 1 p.m.
Correction on Sunday, March 14 at 11:44 p.m.: A previous version of this article misspelled Tyresse Turner and Garret Guillemette’s first names. The article has been updated to reflect the accurate spellings.