Just as Sparky’s pitchfork was catching fire, it got extinguished. Again.
In a season filled with ups and downs, Arizona State (22-22, 12-12 Pac-12) saw the end of what had the potential to be the first force on a late-season push to the postseason. Going for the sweep of USC (21-23, 10-10) at home, ASU folded defensively in a 14-hit, nine-walk, four-error afternoon to halt their five-game winning streak by a final of 11-6.
“I wanted the sweep,” head coach Willie Bloomquist said postgame. “As a whole, we played great the last two days, not so great today…That’s the disappointing part today. Even if we played solid really, it was there for the taking. Can’t walk nine guys and kick the ball around and expect to win on a Sunday.”
USC, in a bid to salvage the Sunday tilt, swiftly pounced on spot-starter Wyatt Halvorson in the first. Despite only scoring three runs in the first two contests this weekend, the Trojans managed to plate a pair in the blink of an eye, both crossing the plate on a two-bagger by Kevin Takeuchi. In a departure from the previous evenings, the Sun Devils were left without an immediate response, putting up zeroes offensively through the first two frames.
Turning back to the top of their lineup, the Trojans once again did damage in the third. Halvorson loaded the bases with one out in the inning and looked to have gotten himself out of a jam with a double-play ball, but Steven Ondina’s relay to first sailed into the dugout. Two runs scored on the error. Ethan Hedges made it hurt even more with an RBI double the next at-bat, and Halvorson was hooked with ASU down 5-0.
“He’s had better outings,” Bloomquist said of Halvorson’s performance. “Today I think sped up on everybody a little bit with Omlid not being able to go last minute. The command wasn’t where it needed to be today. He couldn’t land the breaking stuff consistently. When you’re a one-pitch guy, those things are going to happen.”
“We just started off on the wrong foot,” Brandon Compton added.
Halvorson’s hasty outing came in the wake of a late scratch to Hunter Omlid, who banged up his foot prior to Saturday’s game, which Bloomquist wasn’t made aware of until Saturday night. Having to switch his plans on the fly, Bloomquist mentioned how the curveball got his Sunday pitching plans swinging.
“It was a bummer,” he said. “We had things lined up well with him. You don’t like to shift gears on the fly, but sometimes it happens, and you have to be above it.”
USC plated one more in the inning on a Dean Carpentier double, quickly putting the Devil's five-game winning streak in front of a six-run deficit. Kien Vu stayed red-hot with an RBI single in the bottom half of the inning, but two runners would be stranded as SC starter William Watson snuffed out the scoring chance. The Trojan Horse tossed five innings of two-hit ball, eerily similar to his teammates at the bat who fell victim to the wrong hits in the wrong places off of Connor Markl on Saturday.
“The last two guys probably didn’t fill it up as much with the offspeed pitches,” Ethan Mendoza said. “Not necessarily did we struggle more, but it was hard to know what was coming.”
“He came out shoving,” Compton continued. “Throwing it hard, filling up the zone, it didn’t necessarily go our way.
With their bats unable to find green grass, everything else came crashing down for ASU. Even with the momentum spark that comes with a triple play, ASU’s turn of the rarity couldn’t get anything going in the fifth. Entering the seventh down by a sizable yet manageable five-run deficit, Ryan Schiefer was unable to keep things where they were. The first five Trojan hitters of the inning all reached base on the junior right-hander, scoring two more runs and making the comeback task even more daunting.
The final nail in the coffin came in rather comical fashion in the eighth, with a pair of throwing errors, the third and fourth of the day for the Devils, coming on a tapper to first base. Tobias’s flip to first sailed over Jonah Giblin’s head, and an eventual throw home from Mario Demera spiked in the dirt, scoring two more runs. This would be plenty of insurance against Brandon Compton’s pinch-hit grand slam in the eighth, as the freshman’s blast wouldn’t even threaten to change the outcome of the final Pac-12 series between two of the conference’s most storied programs and bitter rivals.
“I think both programs really respect each other, but both programs really don’t like each other,” Bloomquist noted. “It makes it harder for me now because I really like Andy Stankiewicz and his staff, but man, I love to hate USC. It’s in my bones and my blood.
“The rivalry will hopefully continue. We (along with UCLA) got a lot of history, and to let that just blow up in smoke, I’m going to try not to allow that to happen on my watch.”
Despite the series win, a common theme for a middling Sun Devil season has been the team’s inability to rattle off victories like the 2023 version was adept at until its late-season dive. Now, even at 22-22 and 12-12 in conference play with the season winding down, the ante continues to rise on a team trying to get back in contention.
“Every one matters, of course,” Bloomquist said. “We understand where we’re at; every game is important.”
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