DAVIS, Calif. – The Sacramento State baseball team rallied from an early deficit to defeat rival UC Davis, 8-5, on Tuesday afternoon at Dobbins Stadium to sweep the season series with the Aggies.

 

The win gave Sacramento State a two-game sweep of UC Davis this season and gave the Hornets another 2.5 points in the Causeway Cup standings. After being down 35-5 following football’s loss on Nov. 19, the Hornets have outscored the Aggies 35-10 and are now down just five points at 45-40 with three sports left to meet. The Causeway Cup still has 15 left to be decided with men’s golf on April 17 (five points) plus men’s and women’s track and field (10 combined points) on April 27. Since the 2004-05 season, the Causeway Cup awards 100 total points based on meetings between the two schools’ 17 common sports.

 

The Hornets (20-18) tallied eight runs on 13 hits with one error while the Aggies (13-19) scored five runs on eight hits with three errors, which led to three unearned runs for Sacramento State.

 

Sacramento State was down 4-1 entering the fourth inning when freshman Rhys Hoskins led off the frame with a double and scored two batters later on the Aggies’ first error of the game. Freshman Scotty Burcham hit an RBI ground out to plate another run in the fourth.

 

The Aggies tacked on another run in the fourth and the Hornets responded with a single run in the fifth to make it a 5-4 UC Davis lead heading into the sixth inning.

 

Just like in the last two contests, where Sacramento State scored nine total runs in sixth inning of two wins against No. 25 ranked New Mexico State, the Hornets put up four runs against UC Davis on Tuesday.

 

Sophomore Will Soto and freshman Rhys Hoskins combined to drive in three runs in the inning while the other was unearned following a throwing error by UC Davis’ shortstop.

 

Hoskins went a team-best 3-for-5 with two RBIs and extended his team-best on-base streak to 21 games. He had a season-high 16-game hitting streak snapped on Saturday against NMSU but he still tallied a walk to get on base. Derrick Chung, who was 2-for-5 with a run scored against UC Davis, now has the Hornets’ longest active hitting streak at 12 games. Junior Clay Cederquist and senior Brent Hottman also had two hits each.

 

Freshman reliever Garrett Kraemer (1-1) tallied his first career win after giving up just one hit in three innings. Junior Brandon Creel also did not allow a hit while pitching the eighth and the ninth and tallied his first save of the season. The Hornets’ regular closer, senior R.J. Davis, had pitched on both Sunday and Monday.  

 

After playing five games in the last four days, the Hornets have two days off before hosting Western Athletic Conference foe Nevada for a three-game series at John Smith Field, starting at 2 p.m. on Friday.

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Sacramento State.... 010 214 000 - 8 13 1      (20-18)

UC Davis............         103 100 000 - 5 8 3      (13-19)

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Pitchers: Sacramento State - Nichols, Ty; Kraemer, Garrett(5); Creel, Brandon(8) and Chung.

UC Davis - Koopmans, Spencer; Lanza, Craig(4); Lucas, Ryan(6); Burke, Ben(6); Levy, Chris(8)

and Kalush; Brann.

Win-Kraemer, Garrett(1-1) Save-Creel, Brandon(1) Loss-Lucas, Ryan(0-1) T-2:43 A-144

Weather: 70, cloudy

Game: 38UCD12