Utah beats Oregon in Pac-12 baseball tournament, but season comes to an end
It’s pretty rare for a season to end on a tournament win that isn’t the championship, but that’s exactly what happened to Utah on Wednesday night.
Seventh-seeded Utah, which is in Pool C with fourth-seeded USC and third-seeded Oregon, lost 7-6 to the Trojans on Tuesday in the opening game of Pac-12 tournament pool play and defeated Oregon on Wednesday to finish 1-1. The worst record the Trojans can finish with is 1-1 (USC plays Oregon to wrap up pool play on Thursday), and the tiebreaker for pool play is awarded to the team with the highest seed.
The Utes will not earn the wild card spot, which is awarded to the team with the best record of the non-pool winners, with the tiebreaker again being seeding. With an at-large NCAA tournament spot out of the picture, their season comes to an end with a win.
Bryson Van Sickle earned his fifth win of the season after allowing just one earned run while striking out six over seven innings, and the Utes scored four runs on 14 hits to beat the Ducks 4-2, which was career win No. 400 for head coach Gary Henderson.
Oregon struck first on a wild pitch from Van Sickle in the top of the third inning, but Utah responded in the bottom of the fourth with a Matt Flaharty RBI triple. After the Ducks regained the lead with a Bryce Boettcher RBI single in the top of the fifth, the Utes knotted the game back up at 2-2 with a bases-loaded walk of TJ Clarkson.
With no outs and the bases loaded, the Utes were primed to take the lead, but Kaden Carpenter grounded into a 5-2-3 double play to save the run, then Hunter Antillon grounded out to end the frame.
The Utes had another great opportunity in the bottom of the sixth after Van Sickle made quick work of the Ducks in the top half, with runners on first and third with one out. The double-play bug bit the Utes again, though, as Core Jackson grounded into the inning-ending double play.
Utah finally broke through in the seventh with two hits to lead off the frame, though it looked perilous after Drake Digiorno was picked off at third base for the second out. The Utes worked some two-out magic after Oregon pitcher Bradley Mullan walked the next two batters to load the bases and Flaharty hit a single through Mullan’s legs to score two — his third RBI of the game.
Merit Jones came on to pitch the last two innings for the Utes, sitting the Ducks down in order for the win.
Though it won’t end with their first NCAA tournament appearance since 2016, Utah’s 33-22 record is tied with the 2002 team for the second-best mark in program history, and for the first time in school history, the Utes appeared in a major Top 25 poll. Van Sickle also became the first Ute to win a major individual award in the Pac-12 era, being named the conference’s Pitcher of the Year.
