First baseman TJ Bennett reaches for an out against Loyola Marymount on Friday. The Utes won 6-3 but lost the next two contests against Loyola Marymount 1-0, 11-2.
Steven Douglas / The Los Angeles Loyolan
For 24 of 27 innings, the Utes played excellent baseball this weekend versus Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles. But three bad innings were enough to cost them the series, as they dropped two of three games to open their season.
“We’re still working through things, naturally,” said head coach Bill Kinneberg. “Our offense wasn’t real good on Saturday or Sunday. We just didn’t swing the bats as well as we’re capable of.”
The offense was firing on all cylinders on Friday as Utah claimed a 6-3 win in the season opener. Freshman TJ Bennett belted one out of the park in his first ever at-bat, a two out, two run dinger in the first inning with Kody Davis on base.
“It was a really good moment for our team,” Kinneberg said. “That really kind of kick-started things for us.”
Then Brock Duke went to work and carried Utah through six perfect innings on the mound. Loyola Marymount finally got on the board in the seventh inning with two runs on an RBI double, but Mitch Watrous came in to relieve Duke in the seventh and earned the save.
Saturday was a different story for the offense as the Utes fell 1-0 in a pitcher’s duel. Junior college transfer Tanner Banks made his first career start on the mound for Utah, throwing 7 1/3 innings and surrendering just one run on four hits. LMU scored its only run of the game in the third inning after singles from Cullen Mahoney and Matt Lowenstein.
Tyler Relf led off the ninth inning with a single as the Utes looked to even the score late, but they were unable to convert and left him stranded on third to end the game.
“At least we had runners in scoring position and we had opportunities,” Kinneberg said. “The next step is to capitalize and get that key hit and get that key run across. We need to take that as a learning experience.”
Things got worse for Utah as it dropped Sunday’s rubber match 11-2. Though it was a large margin of defeat, the Utes hung tough for most of the game as all of LMU’s offense came in two innings. The Lions put up six runs off seven hits in the fourth and five runs off four hits and two Utah errors in the eighth.
“In this game, it’s tough to overcome some of those mistakes,” Kinneberg said. “It’s our hope that we learned something from that and next time that situation arises, we can make a pitch or make a play to end those kind of rallies.”
After losing the season-opening series, Kinneberg said he is still optimistic for the season the young team has ahead of it. Utah has cultivated a new crop of athletes, with 16 of the 25 players being new to the team.
“One of the brightest spots for me the whole weekend … I looked up there one time and there was six freshmen on the field,” Kinneberg said. “That’s a good and a bad thing. They got to get their feet wet, and they got to get going.”