In baseball, where teams can have three or four competitions every week over the course of a 16-week season, it is generally acceptable to pay less attention to individual wins and focus on a program’s overall performance and post-season accomplishments.
But every so often, a particular game or series comes along that really stands out — a win that marks the turning point in a season and inspires the team moving forward.
For the Utes, this kind of milestone victory occurred over the weekend when the Utes traveled to Eugene’s PK Park and defeated No.19 Oregon twice, beating them 4-1 on Friday and rallying from a 9-5 loss on Saturday to shutout the Ducks 2-0 in Sunday’s series finale.
The pair of wins are Utah’s third and fourth wins over the Ducks since entering the conference, and it was a welcome turn of events for a team that had a rough 4-11 start to the season.
Kody Davis, the team’s leadoff hitter, who came up big for the offense with runs in the first innings of Friday and Sundays’ games, thinks these wins provide the team a desperately needed boost.
“It was the fresh start that we needed,” Davis said “We knew going into conference play that we were 0-0 and it was time to turn it around, and it felt good to get the two wins.”
Since the team began competing in the Pac-12 five seasons ago, any victories in three game series against conference opponents have been scarce. The weekend’s victories against Oregon was only Utah’s fourth series win in six seasons. The Ute offense was more successful than in previous matchups at bringing in runs to back up the defense. The overall performance from the bullpen and defense was capped off by a complete-game shutout from lefty Josh Lapiana on Sunday.
“It was pretty clear our pitching was phenomenal. All those guys threw really well, Lapiana especially, it was fun to watch him throw,” Davis said. “We’ll need to keep executing our offense and have fun competing. That’s really what it was this weekend for us. We had a lot of fun and things went well.”
The Utes hadn’t won a conference opener since the team’s first Pac-12 game against USC in 2012. Lapiana believes this victory was a crucial step toward achieving Utah’s post-season goals and it provided tremendous validation.
Looking ahead to this weekend’s slate of games, the Utes have all the confidence in the world after taking two games from a top-25 opponent.
“At the end of the day, it’s all about being in the top six in the Pac-12 and making sure that we get to the regional,” Lapiana said. “Coming off of last weekend, we showed what we can do and we’re not going to sneak up on anybody this season.”
Davis believes after coming up short in many contested series in past seasons, the team’s victory on Sunday shows the growth of the program. On the bus after the games, it was a bit of a surreal experience for Davis and the rest of the team with all the media attention on how they pulled off the upset, but he’s never thought about it that way.
The team has been competitive in plenty of games, and this time around it finally paid off. He thinks this year’s team has the talent to be successful, despite some mistakes it made on the road.
“Now we’re finally doing what we know what we can do,” Davis said. “We didn’t play perfect, which is something we can take away from this. We don’t have to play perfect every day to win. We’re good enough to do things right and get on the scoreboard and win games.”
Utah will look to continue its successful start to conference play in this weekend’s three game series at Arizona State.
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