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Box Score 2 OAKLAND – It probably wasn’t the first masterpiece Academy of Art University’s baseball players have seen. But it was undoubtedly their least favorite. Troy Neiman and Chris Rodriguez combined on the first no-hitter in Chico State baseball history as the Wildcats completed a doubleheader sweep with a 13-0 throttling of the Urban Knights Saturday night at Laney College in Oakland. The 9th-ranked Wildcats, now 3-0, won the opener 7-1.
Neiman (1-0) struck out eight in six innings in his first start of the season. But any hopes he might have entertained of coming out to finish the game surely ended while he watched the Wildcats score 10 times in a marathon top-of-the-seventh. Rodriguez took the hill instead, and struck out three in the seventh.
Three Urban Knights reached base in the game, but none via hit, walk, or hit batter. The perfect game ended on an error with one down in the fourth. Because Eric Angerer threw out Lyle Brackenridge attempting to make it to second on the play, Neiman still had faced the minimum through five.
Neiman struck out the leadoff hitter in the sixth – his fourth of six consecutive punch-outs – but he reached on a wild pitch.
The only other Urban Knight to reach came on a strikeout-passed ball leading off the seventh against Rodriguez.
Six one-hitters have been pitched in Chico State history. The last time it happened came on the combined effort of Michael Gleason, Sheldon Lechuga, Scott Nartker and Scott Newberry in the 2010 season opener.
That is the lone nine-inning one-hitter in school history. The Wildcats have pitched five seven-inning one-hitters. Ironically, Saturday night’s no-no came on the five-year anniversary of Andrew Pluta’s one-hitter. He allowed a leadoff hit in the seventh to end the perfect game.
Ryne Clark and Jake Bailey made the most out of their first starts in a Chico State uniform, driving in three runs apiece for the Wildcats. Bailey, a catcher, was 3-for-5 with a double. Clark, an outfielder, went 2-for-4. Eric Angerer and Pierson Jeremiah also had two hits for the Wildcats.
Sean Martin (1-0) got the win in the opener, scattering four hits and striking out three in four scoreless innings. Kagen Hopkins, Jeremy Perez and Mike Botelho combined on four-and-two-thirds innings of scoreless relief.
The Wildcats took a 2-0 lead on a sacrifice fly by Blake Gibbs and Austin Prott’s RBI-double in the third.
But it was just 2-1 before the Wildcats grabbed some insurance in the eighth. Prott and Ben Manlove led off the inning with singles and Boulden plated Prott before Jordan Beck’s sacrifice fly bought Manlove home.
They broke the game open with three more runs in the top of the ninth on Manlove’s bases-clearing double. Angerer, Manlove and Prott produced two hits apiece in the game.
As they would be in the nightcap, the Wildcats were hit by pitches four times. After leading the nation with 114 hit batsmen last season, the Wildcats have already been plunked 13 times in three games in 2013.
The series concludes with a single game Sunday. The Wildcats will open California Collegiate Athletic Association action next weekend at Cal State Dominguez Hills before playing their home-opening four-game series against Northwest Nazarene University Feb. 20-22.
