SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Junior Ryan Christiansen finished with a pair of hits and four RBI and host Sacramento State scored early and often against UC Riverside pitching, lifting the Hornets to a 9-6 victory and a sweep of their non-conference series on Sunday afternoon at John Smith Field.
The weekend marked the second series sweep of the year for Sacramento State, which improved to 26-17 overall and swept a series with the Highlanders for the first time in the history of the series. UC Riverside, which has now lost 20 of its last 23 games, fell to 13-28 overall.
Sunday's contest started with fireworks, even though it took only one hit for the Highlanders to grab the early lead as a hit batter and a pair of walks led to a Tyson Reis grand slam in the top of the first for a 4-0 lead.
From that point on, it was all Hornets. Sacramento State sent nine batters to the plate in both the first and second innings, answering Riverside's four runs with four scores of its own in the home half of the first and tacking on three more in the second for a 7-4 advantage.
Elie Kligman and Christiansen drew bases loaded walks in the inning around an RBI single by Luis Pimentel Guerrero and Cameron Sewell added a sacrifice fly later in the first to tie the game. An inning later, Kligman and Christiansen drove in two more runs with singles and Jakob Poturnak added a sacrifice fly to make it a three-run contest.
Christiansen then capped his day with his sixth home run of the season, clearing the wall in right field and scoring Pimentel-Guerrero ahead of him for a 9-4 lead.
UC Riverside would add a pair of runs in the sixth to get a little closer but the Hornet bullpen shut the door the rest of the way as Brady Chavez, Andrew Monson, Noah Lucchesi, and Kade Brown combined to scatter two hits and strike out four over the final four innings en route to the win.
Carson Latimer (2-1) earned the win, allowing four runs on four hits and striking out three over five innings of work, while Brown earned his second save of the weekend and his 13th of the season with a scoreless ninth, erasing a lead-off single with a double and striking out the last batter to end the game.
Christiansen and Tyler White each finished with a pair of hits, the latter reaching base safely for the 20th consecutive game and scoring twice. Kligman added two walks and two runs scored to his final line, as did JP Smith, who clobbered his 17th double of the year in the second.
A run of five games in five days continues on Monday (April 28) as Sacramento State heads to the Bay Area to take on Stanford at 6 p.m., before returning home on Tuesday night (April 29) for the third and final meeting with Causeway rival UC Davis, also at 6 p.m.
