March 7, 2015
SAN JOSE, Calif. - San Jose State's baseball team was shut out for the first time this season Saturday, falling 12-0 to Air Force at Municipal Stadium.
The Spartans (5-9, 1-4 MW) and Falcons (4-8, 2-3 MW) have each taken one game on the weekend after last night's 2-0 San Jose State victory.
Matt Brown (1-1) made his first career start for the Spartans and took the loss. The freshman went 5.0 innings, giving up six runs (two earned) on six hits while walking one and striking out three.
Air Force's Steven Trojan (1-0) got the win, tossing 6.1 innings of shutout ball before giving way to Nathan Stanford and Ryan Holloway, who combined to throw 2.2 hitless innings.
San Jose State made three errors on the afternoon and managed only four hits one day after collecting 10 hits and committing just one error, while Air Force finished with a season-high 15 hits off four Spartan pitchers.
"It's really disappointing. That's our problem right now: we have an opportunity to make up some ground and we didn't play well," said head coach Dave Nakama. "It's the same thing where we make errors; if you look at our stats we're fielding .960 or something like that, and you're not going to be a good team if you don't play defense."
Andre Mercurio (1-3, 2B) extended his reached-base streak to 13 games with a third-inning double right and has now hit at least one double in each of the last three games.
Chris Williams (1-3) added a base hit for the Spartans, extending his team-leading hit streak to five games.
Air Force got on the board in the fourth inning with a lone run before a five-run outburst in the fifth broke the game open, thanks in large part to a three-run homer by Tyler Jones.
The Falcons picked up another run in the seventh and then plated five more in the eighth behind five hits and a pair of Spartan errors.
"No matter what, we played awful today and we still have a chance to win a series tomorrow, so we'll see what happens," Nakama said.
San Jose State sends junior right-handerRoss Slaney (1-1, 1.80) to the mound Sunday at 1:00 p.m. to face off with Air Force's Jacob DeVries (1-2, 4.11) in the rubber match.