Box Score Chico State Baseball Coach Dave Taylor enjoyed his 600th victory as a Wildcats coach Sunday. In fact, he enjoyed it more than most.
Taylor’s Wildcats scored runs on four straight two-out hits in the second inning and got three runs home from third with less than two out in a 9-5 victory against Cal State Stanislaus at Nettleton Stadium, completing a four-game series sweep of the Warriors.
“That might have been our best game of the season,” said Taylor.
The Wildcats have won 248 games since Taylor took over as head coach in 2007. And they won 352 while Taylor was the team’s pitching coach from 1997-2004. During those 14-plus seasons, the Wildcats are 600-241-1 and boast 10 NCAA Championship berths, six NCAA Tournament West Region titles, and two NCAA championships.
The 600th was special because the Wildcats did it the way Taylor teaches: with clutch two-out hits and a team-first approach at the plate. They also threw strikes, walking only two, and played error-free defense.
In doing so, 13th-ranked Chico State improved to 19-5 overall and 12-4 in the California Collegiate Athletic Association (CCAA) while tightening their grip on first place. With a winning percentage of .750, the Wildcats now have some cushion over their pursuers, including Cal State L.A. (.700), Sonoma State (.625), and Cal State East Bay and Cal State Monterey Bay (.600).
Starter Kagen Hopkins (4-0) earned the win for Chico State. He allowed three runs on eight hits in five and two-thirds innings. Hopkins’ fifth of seven strikeouts was the 100th of his Chico State career. He walked just one to improve to 12-4 as a Wildcat. Chico State is 15-4 in Hopkins’ 19 starts over the past season-plus.
Austin Prott and Myles Dempsey collected three hits apiece to lead a well-balanced offensive attack. Cody Slader went 2-for-2 and stole two bases. Cody Webber and Pierson Jeremiah notched two hits apiece. And Eric Angerer drove in three runs.
The Wildcats knotted the score 1-1 in the first when Jeremiah singled, Prott doubled, and Blake Gibbs lifted a sacrifice fly to right.
They broke it open in the second as Slader, Angerer and Jeremiah notched consecutive two-out RBI singles. Prott’s single was then misplayed by the centerfielder, allowing another run to score and building Chico State’s lead to 5-1.
They added another run in the third when Webber doubled and came around to score on Dempsey’s base hit. Angerer’s sacrifice fly in the fifth made it 7-1.
Cal State Stanislaus finally got to Hopkins in the sixth and scored twice to cut the lead to 7-3. But Morgan Yee got them out of the inning without further trouble. Chico State then got a run back in the bottom-half of the inning when Prott singled, moved to second on a ball in the dirt, advanced to third on Gibbs’ grounder, and scored on a wild pitch.
The Wildcats added an insurance run in the seventh with Angerer’s fielders’ choice grounder to make it 9-3.
Cal State Stanislaus (7-24, 4-20 CCAA) got single runs in the eighth and ninth but never got the tying run to the plate.
Chico State will take its five-game winning streak on the road for a four-game series at San Francisco State beginning Thursday. First pitch is set for 3 p.m. They’ll play a doubleheader Friday at 11 and then a single game Saturday at 11. After that, the Wildcats are home for 15 of their final 20. They’ll host Cal State San Bernardino for a four-game series April 5-7, travel to Cal Poly Pomona for a four-game series April 12-14, and then come home to play UC San Diego, Sonoma State and Cal State L.A. All of those games will be at Nettleton Stadium except for the April 28th Capital City Clash showdown at Raley Field against rival Sonoma State.
