Baseball Splits First Four Home Games of Season

By Tom Schreier

The Santa Clara baseball team has gotten off to a hot start despite being picked to finish last in theWest Coast Conference. With a refined image that includes a new manager and new uniforms, the Broncos split a four-game series with the University of Illinois at Chicago over the weekend and then defeated the University of Nevada at Reno on Tuesday to move their overall record to 7-2.

"We're not going to get caught up in it," said Head Coach Dan O'Brien. "We're picked to finish last. Nobody expects us to do much, so lets just go out and have fun."

This type of fun was demonstrated when the team played tag in the outfield before their home opener against UCI last Friday.

"We're not thinking too much into it," said Friday's starting pitcher Tommy Nance, a junior college transfer. "We're just happy to play baseball. We love it."

So far, this attitude has seemed to have helped the Broncos focus on simply winning baseball games. The results were evident on Friday night under the lights at Schott Stadium.

Junior Pat Stover delivered the first Santa Clara home run of the season, a bomb that cleared the batting cages in left field.

"I wasn't trying to do too much with the pitch," said Stover, who was drafted in the seventh round by the Oakland Athletics out of high school. "It was belt high and it was right down the middle so it kind of took care of itself."

In the second day of the series on Saturday, Santa Clara not only suffered the first loss of their season, they got swept in a double-header.

Although the first game was close, 7-6, the second was a blowout, 12-1.

The Broncos took a 6-5 lead into the ninth inning of the first game, galvanized by senior Andrew Biancardi's home run which hit the top of the batting cages beyond the left field wall.

"We practice focusing on line drives," Biancardi said of his approach at the plate. "I got a little under it and got enough to get it out of here."

However, senior pitcher Paul Twining gave up two runs in the top of the ninth and the Broncos could not rally in the bottom frame to pull out the win.

Due to the proximity of the contests, the final two games in the series (the second game of the doubleheader and the Sunday game) concluded early.

It was predetermined that the second game of the doubleheader would end after seven innings while the Sunday game would end at 12:30 p.m., approximately two and a half hours after it began.

In the second game of the doubleheader on Saturday, UCI scored a combined nine runs in the sixth and seventh innings to put a close game out of hand for the Broncos.

O'Brien appeared unfazed that his perfect record was now tarnished following the two Saturday losses.

"You might be surprised: we're not all that focused on wining and losing games right now," he said. "We have certain patterns that we need to avoid. We got a little comfortable and then there was adversity and then we didn't handle that adversity well. I'm much more concerned with that than I am that we won or lost games today."

The team also faced adversity in the Sunday game after losing the lead in the fifth inning

Junior starting pitcher Chris Mendoza was chased, sophomore reliever Powell Fansler gave up a triple to the first batter he faced and the team gave up five runs before recording any outs. This prompted O'Brien to walk to the mound for a quick team meeting. Following the discussion, Fansler produced three quick outs.

In the sixth inning, Biancardi led off with a walk, freshman Matt Glomb was hit by a pitch and senior Evan Peters singled to left-center to open the floodgates.

The Broncos would score seven runs in the sixth and three in the seventh before their rally was curtailed by the mandated 12:30 p.m. end time.

"Their pitcher had been sitting on the bench for probably 20 minutes after the five-run inning," said Biancardi. "Once they had the walk and the hit by pitch the wheels kind of got spinning and our offense came alive."

"Adversity is inevitable," said O'Brien. "We're going to be a team that not only can handle it, but we'e going to respond to it right away."

The Broncos host cross-town rival San Jose State tomorrow at 6:00 p.m.

Contact Tom Schreier at tschreier@scu.edu or (408) 554-4852.