April 12, 2001
By Keith Candau
Media Relations Student Assistant
SANTA CLARA, Calif. - The Santa Clara University baseball team dropped a 4-2 decision to the San Diego Toreros Thursday at Buck Shaw Stadium. San Diego's starting pitcher Ricky Barrett (7-2) struck out 11 batters to earn his seventh victory of the season. With the loss Santa Clara's record falls to 13-23 and 9-7 in the WCC. The Broncos remain in first place in the Coast Division of the conference. San Diego improves its record to 25-13 and 11-5 in league play, still second in the West Division behind Pepperdine.
Sophomore Joe Diefenderfer (3-4) shut out the Toreros through the first five innings until Greg Sain hit his league-leading 14th homerun of the year, a solo shot with one out in the sixth inning to make the score 2-1. San Diego would proceed to score a run in each of the last three innings of the game.
In the eighth inning, Diefenderfer retired the first two batters before giving up a double to Joey Prast. Jason Marian then singled to knock in the game-winning run. Diefenderfer finished the evening recording seven and two-thirds innings pitched and a career-high in strikeouts with nine. Freshman Chad Fillinger finished off the game for the Broncos giving up one run in the ninth inning.
For San Diego, Barrett recorded four walks in the second inning to give the Broncos a 1-0 lead. In the third inning, sophomore Jack Headley walked and then advanced to third off of an attempted pick-off move by Barrett that rolled into the Broncos' dugout. Senior Mike Theoharis knocked in Headley off of an error by second baseman Mike McCoy to increase the Bronco lead to 2-0. However, Santa Clara would be shut out the remainder of the game as Barrett would only allow three hits in the next five innings. Tom Caple would earn his league-leading seventh save of the season.
Santa Clara was led offensively by Headley, and Joey Gomes who each went 1-for-3 and scored both of the Broncos' runs. Jason Marian led the Toreros going 2-for-4 with a RBI.
Santa Clara plays game two of the three-game conference series with the Toreros on Friday, April 13. First pitch is scheduled for 7 p.m. Saturday's finale is schedule for a 1 p.m. first pitch.
