By Brandon Rebboah
SANTA CLARA, Calif.- Santa Clara (11-10) carried Sunday's offensive fireworks into Monday's series finale, defeating Brown, 17-3, to sweep the four-game series. Freshman Powell Fansler improved to 3-0 with a dominant performance, pitching a no-hitter through 5.2 innings, allowing one run on two hits in 5.2 innings pitched. Santa Clara's 22-hit day was highlighted by Matt Ozanne's 3-run homer in the first inning.
"I think we were consuming ourselves with having quality at-bats," said head coach Mark O'Brien. " We weren't afraid to hit deep in the count, I think that was a big factor for us. I'm very happy with how Powell pitched. He competed and did what we asked him to do."
Santa Clara got off to a fast start, scoring six runs before Brown registered the first out of the game. Freshman Kyle DeMerritt got the Broncos on the board with a RBI-single. Curtis Wagner continued the early offensive onslaught by singling to right field. DeMerritt scored on a wild pitch and Pat Terry added another single. Ozanne's three-run homer, his second dinger of the year, sailed over the left field to give Santa Clara a 6-0 lead after one inning.
"I felt really comfortable [at the plate]," said Ozanne. "Just making the adjustments that I had been working on was good. The homer was on a 3-1 pitch and I was able to pop it out of here."
After Ozanne picked up his fourth RBI with a sacrifice-fly in the second, the Broncos tacked on three more runs in the third. Lucas Herbst scored Blake Leyva on a fielder's choice and DeMerritt doubled to left field to gather his second RBI of the day. Wagner tallied his second single of the day to put Santa Clara up 10-0.
In the fifth, Pat Terry roped a ball down the first-base line to knock in two run, extending the Bronco lead to 12-0.
In the top of the sixth, Brown's John Sheridan broke up Fansler's no-hitter and third baseman Ryan Zrenda knocked Sheridan in to put Brown's first run on the board. After the Bears loaded the bases with two outs, Paul Twining relieved Fansler. Twining delivered a groundout to end the inning.
After three consecutive singles to start the sixth, Stephen Takahashi delivered a pinch-hit two-RBI double. Drew Ozanne then provided another pinch-hit RBI, followed by a Curtis Wagner RBI single. Brian Roby finished the inning's scoring with the third pinch-hit RBI of the inning to extend Santa Clara's lead to 17-1.
Brown scored two runs on a Bronco error in the eighth inning to make the final score 17-3.
Santa Clara's next game is Wednesday at home against UC Davis at 6 p.m.
Game Notes: The first pitch was thrown at 6:00 p.m. … the first pitch of the game was crushed by John Sheridan, but Matt Ozanne tracked it down and made a nice over-the-shoulder catch… in the second inning, Lucas Herbst misjudged a ball hit to right field, but recovered to make an acrobatic catch… Gregory Harisis pinch hit for Terry in the sixth and remained in the game in left field… Drew Ozanne stayed in the game at third base after pinch-hitting… Stephen Meade pinch-hit in the sixth and stayed in the game in right field… Takahashi replaced Ozanne in center field… Looney moved from left field to catcher in the top of the seventh… in the ninth, Justin Viele tracked down a ball to his left and made an off-balanced throw to out Graham Tyler… in the last two games, Santa Clara has scored 35 runs which is more than one-fourth of their total runs this season… Twining was relieved by Mike Couch with two outs in the seventh… Max Deering came out to start the eighth inning for Santa Clara… Jason Westerberg pitched the ninth inning for the Broncos.
