Baseball Drops Series Opener Against Oregon

OGDEN – The Utah baseball team dropped its opening game to the No. 9 Oregon Ducks 7-3 on Friday at Lindquist Field on Friday night.
 
Utah totaled 11 hits with Christopher Rowan, Jr. and Chase Fernlund having seven of them. Rowan went 4-5 and Fernlund went 3-4. They each had an RBI and scored a run.
 
In the eighth inning trailing 5-3, Richardson singled and advanced to second on a sacrifice bunt from Jaylon McLaughlin. Jayden Kiernan and Kai Roberts had chances to get the Utes within one, but the Ducks got both of them to strike out ending the threat.
 
Oregon then got a couple of insurance runs in the top of the ninth to help earn the win in the first game of the series.
 
The Ducks started one of the best pitchers in the Pac-12 and Utah jumped on him early. The Utes had three hits in the first inning and evened the score at one. Oregon added one run in the second and third innings to go up 3-1.
 
Fernlund hit his first home run of the season in the fourth to get Utah back within one run. The Ducks added one more run in the fifth and sixth to go back up 5-2.
 
Utah had two hits in the sixth, but couldn't get a run across the board until the seventh. After Rowan got one of his four hits, Kramer reached on an error driving in Rowan to make the score 5-3.
 
Dustyn Schramm had shutdown innings in the seventh and eighth giving Utah a chance to tie up the score. After Richardson hit a single and McLaughlin bunted him over to second, bringing up the tying run with one out. Kiernan battled to a full count fouling several pitches off before striking out swinging. Oregon then went to their closer and he struck out Roberts to end the eighth inning.
 
In the top of the ninth, Oregon added a couple more runs to their lead and Utah couldn't get anything going for a comeback.
 
Justin Kelly gave up three earned runs on nine hits in 5.0 innings pitched. Dustyn Schramm pitched 3.1 innings keeping Oregon off the board until the ninth inning when they added two more runs to their lead.
 
Utah and Oregon will play in the second game of the series on Saturday at 4 p.m. at Lindquist Field in Ogden.