Sun Devils defeat Wildcats in Tucson
By Kody Acevedo
It doesn’t matter if they’re at home or on the road, the Arizona State Sun Devils manage to continue to find a way to win. For the first time this season, the Sun Devils traveled south to Tucson to take on the Arizona Wildcats at Hi Corbett Field and walked away with a 6-5 victory.
The Wildcats blew the gates open in the bottom of the 2nd when they put four runs on the board.
A bases loaded walk to Justin Behnke and a double off the bat of Scott Kingery gave Arizona the early lead and forced the Sun Devils to play from behind early. But after the blow-up inning, ASU pitching would settle down and throw six consecutive scoreless innings. In the meantime, the Sun Devils offense went to work.
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The Sun Devils jumped on board in the 4th when David Greer scored on a sacrifice fly from R.J. Ybarra. Both teams were silent in the 5th inning, but in the 6th, ASU would take back the lead after putting up a four spot of their own.
A couple of singles from Trever Allen and Andrew Snow, a sacrifice bunt by Joey Bielek and sacrifice fly by Zach Cerbo put the Sun Devils ahead 5-4. The Sun Devils would tack on another run in the 7th to extend their lead 6-4.
Tracy Smith then called on Ryan Burr to close out the bottom up the 9th with his team up by two. But the Wildcats would not make it easy on Burr.
The Sun Devils thought they retired Kingery for the second out of the inning on a strike out, but a low pitch allowed Kingery to advance to first and the Sun Devils couldn’t complete the strike out. A two-out double by Kevin Newman followed by an RBI single from Bobby Dalbec brought the Wildcats within one.
But Burr would be the one to “bear down”, if you will, and retired the next two batters to hold Arizona to just one run on his watch and give the Sun Devils the victory.
Ryan Hingst was credited with the win, his third of the season. He is now 3-1 on the year. Arizona pitcher Austin Schnabel took home the loss. He sits at 2-3 this season. Burr was awarded his 12th save of 2015 and boy did he earn it.
ASU is now 3-1 against Arizona this season. They took 2/3 from the Wildcats at Phoenix Muni back on April 11-13. The Sun Devils improve to 26-11 overall this season. The Wildcats fall to 24-14.
Up next, the Sun Devils return home this weekend to Phoenix Muni and host Tennessee Tech for a three-game series beginning on Friday night.