No. 6 Santa Ana Baseball Rallies to Defeat No. 1 Riverside City in Game Three

No. 6 Santa Ana Baseball Rallies to Defeat No. 1 Riverside City in Game Three

SANTA ANA, Calif. - Despite dropping the first two games of their series against the No. 1 ranked Riverside City Tigers (26-7, 13-2) , No. 6 Santa Ana College Baseball rallied to take the third game by a score of 9-4. 

Riverside jumped out to an early lead as they took advantage of a Don error to produce the first run of the game in the second inning. In the third, the Tigers added two more on a wild pitch and a sacrifice fly to push their lead to 3-0. 

Santa Ana (22-12, 9-6) came to life in the fifth inning when Troy Kent hammered a ball over the right field fence with a runner on for his sixth homerun of the season. The Dons would tie the game at 3-3 in the next inning on a sacrifice fly from Matthew Dobson to score Marc Schavone after his leadoff triple.

With all the momentum on their side, Santa Ana began to rally and opened the game open in the seventh inning. SAC used six hits including three home runs to score six to gain a 9-3 lead. 

RCC threatened in the ninth inning when they loaded the bases with no outs but CJ Brown settled down and got a double-play and a fly out to limit the damage to just one run, giving the Dons a 9-4 win. 

The trio of Eddie Pelc, Austin Haller and Marc Schavone recorded two hits each while Mario Tostado and Jimmy De Anda produced big hits to collect a pair of RBI each.

Jaxton Andeel got the start and struck out four in five innings of work. The lefty gave up three runs (2 earned) in a no decision. 

Sophomore right hander Matt Schavone entered the game in the sixth and went two scoreless innings with a strikeout to earn his second win of the year. Rocco Gurrola and Brown threw the final two innings to help the Dons earn the victory.

SAC will be back in action on Tuesday when they start their Orange Empire Conference series against Cypress on the road. It will be a critical series with Cypress sitting in second place in the OEC standings at 9-6 with the Dons chasing in third. First pitch is set for 2:00 p.m.

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