Friday night, No. 13 Arizona baseball defeat Southern California 9-4 to start a three-game series.
With the win, Arizona improves to 18-7 on the season and a perfect 14-0 at home. The Wildcats have not lost at Hi Corbett since May 15, 2016, in a 5-1 loss to Arizona State.
Attendance on Friday was 4,173 at Hi Corbett.
JC Cloney got the start for Arizona and pitched seven innings in a win. With the win, Cloney is still undefeated on the season and improves to 6-0. Cloney allowed six hits and two earned runs while striking out four batters.
Arizona started off the game hot with two quick runs in the first inning. A J.J. Matijevic double scored Alfonso Rivas and then a wild pitch scored Jared Oliva.
USC responded in the second inning with a solo home run by Cris Perez to cut the lead to 2-1.
After USC tied the game in the fourth inning, Arizona regained the lead in the fifth as an Oliva single scored Cal Stevenson. Arizona would rack up five runs in the fifth inning to extend the lead to 7-2.
In the seventh inning, Nick Quintana would register an inside the park home run to extend the lead to 9-2.
“When Coach Johnson was waving me around, I was like alright,” Quintana said. “I could probably get thrown out by 10 feet but he dropped it.”
USC would score two runs in the eighth inning to decrease the deficit to 9-4 but would not score any more runs.
With that home run, Quintana increased his total to four, tying him with Oliva for first on Arizona. All four of Quintana’s home runs have occurred in the last four weekends.
In four at-bats, Quintana registered two hits, two runs, and two runs batted in for Arizona.
“He came in with a lot of ability and he has made the adjustments necessary to be a good hitter at this level,” said Arizona head coach Jay Johnson. “He had a tough first couple of at-bats but put it aside, played great defense, and was awesome in his last two at-bats.”
Quintana was originally committed to USC in 2015 but flipped his commitment in November of 2015.
While Quintana led the Wildcats offensive attack, a plethora of other hitters contributed for Arizona. Four other hitters registered multiple-hit games with Mitchell Morimoto registering three hits.
“We never stop, we try to take good at-bats every single inning and JC did a good job,” Matijevic said. “We came in and we were relentless with our at-bats and we were just putting the ball into play and taking advantage.”
The Wildcats return to Hi Corbett on Saturday at 6 P.M. as pitcher Randy Labaut will start for the Wildcats.
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