San Diego—At 4-0 this season, the UC Riverside Baseball Team is off to its best start since the 2010 campaign. The team puts that unblemished mark on the line this week in a four-game, road-home series against another 4-0 squad, the San Diego State Aztecs.
The Highlanders four wins over Portland last weekend also marked their first four-game sweep of an opponent since the 2004 season when they won four straight on the road at Hawai'i-Hilo.
UCR got great starting pitching performances on Friday (
box score/
recap) and Saturday (
box score/
recap) from Kevin Sprague and Angel Landazuri. Sprague went seven complete innings scattering four hits and allowing just one earned run, while Landazuri went six-and-two-thirds allowing five hits and striking out five.
The Highlanders needed some gutty long-relief performances in the third (
box score/
recap) and fourth games (
box score/
recap) of the Portland series. Keaton Leach, who was scheduled to start Sunday, was instead called on early in game two of Saturday's double header, and he allowed just one run in 5.2 innings, striking out seven as the Highlanders came back for an 8-4 win. On Sunday, Peter Beattie pitched three scoreless innings holding the Pilots in check while the UC Riverside bats came alive to post a 9-7 come-from-behind victory.
The Highlanders also got a Big West Player of the Week performance out of senior second baseman Joe Chavez who posted a slash line of .545/.647/.818 on the week (
read the story).
San Diego State opened the 2015 season last weekend with three wins over visiting Valparaiso and a Tuesday evening decision over Loyola Marymount. The Aztecs are averaging more than nine runs per game thanks to a 22-run outburst on Saturday in a 22-12 win over Valpo.
The Aztecs have had the Highlanders number of late winning 10 of the last 13 meetings between the clubs, Each of the last three games has ended in a one-run San Diego State victory (
view all-time results).
