UCLA
23-13-1
Loyola Marymount
21-17
Bruins Land 7-1 Midweek Win at LMU
April 25, 2023 | Baseball
LOS ANGELES โ Sophomore shortstop Duce Gourson and junior third baseman Kyle Karros launched back-to-back home runs in the top of the first and UCLA never looked back in a 7-1 win over LMU on Tuesday night at Page Stadium.
The Bruins (23-13-1) never relinquished the lead after plating those three runs in the first, adding a single run in the third before taking control with another three-spot in the fifth.
LMU (21-17) had a hit in each of the first six innings of the game, but could never string together a rally. After scoring a single run in the bottom of the first, seven Bruinย pitchers combined to hold them off the board the rest of the way.
It marked the second time this year that the Bruins hit back-to-back jacks, the last time coming two months to the day at Vanderbilt.
Gourson hit the first of the two bombs, going the other way with a 2-0 offering and hitting a fly ball that kept carrying until it flew past the wall in left-center field.
Karros followed by teeing off on the third pitch of his AB, pulling it to left-center, not far from where Gourson's fly ball left the yard.
Senior catcher Darius Perry (2-4, two RBIs) was at the center of UCLA's other two run-scoring rallies.
First, he lined a base hit to left to plate Karros in the third inning.
Two innings later, he drove a 1-2 pitch off the base of LMU's Blue Monster in left field, scoring sophomore first baseman Jack Holman. That was the first of three consecutive run-scoring plays for the Bruins, as junior DH JonJon Vaughns followed with a sac fly before junior right fielder Carson Yates capped the scoring with an RBI double of his own.
Each of the six relievers used by UCLA on Tuesday failed to allow a run.
Sophomore righty Nate Leibold was the first man out of the bullpen, delivering 2 1/3 innings of two-hit relief en route to his first-career win. He got the Bruins out of a two-on jam in the second, faced the minimum in the third, and allowed just one hit in the fourth.
Finn McIlroy followed with a scoreless fifth, Caedon Kottinger struck out three over just 1 2/3 innings, and Jake Saum got the final out of a 1-2-3 seventh. Righties Chris Aldrich and Cody Delvecchio followed with three-up, three-down frames to close it out.
UCLA continues a season-long eight-game road trip this weekend, traveling to No. 8 Stanford for a three-game Pac-12 series starting at 7:00 p.m. PT on Friday.
Team Stats
Pitching:
W: Leibold, Nate (1-0)
L: Chaz McRoberts (0-2)
Batting:
2B: Perry, Darius 1 ; Yates, Carson 1
HR: Gourson, Duce 1 ; Karros, Kyle 1
RBI: Gourson, Duce 2 ; Karros, Kyle 1 ; Perry, Darius 2 ; Vaughns, JonJon 1 ; Yates, Carson 1
SF: Vaughns, JonJon 1
Base Running:
RUNS: Reyes, Daylen 1 ; Gourson, Duce 1 ; Karros, Kyle 2 ; Holman, Jack 1 ; Knight, Malakhi 1 ; Perry, Darius 1
SB: Knight, Malakhi 1 ; Hocking, Jarrod 1
CS: Reyes, Daylen 1
HBP: Reyes, Daylen 1 ; Knight, Malakhi 1 ; Perry, Darius 1 ; Hocking, Jarrod 1
Batting:
2B: Cole Roberts 1
Base Running:
RUNS: Sam Biller 1
