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For the third time, the Seton Hall Pirates dominated the Arizona Wildcats behind a combo of good SHU pitching and horrible Arizona hitting.
The Pirates jumped out to an early 4-0 lead in the final game of the series, and never looked back on their way to an 11-2 win. The game was only eight innings to allow Seton Hall to travel back to New Jersey.
Head coach Andy Lopez put it all on himself after the game.
"Poorly coached weekend by me," he said. "I gotta get better. I'm doing a horrible job at coaching right now."
"I was really impressed with Seton Hall. They did everything well. Tough weekend."
Arizona's Morgan Earman made his first career start after Tyler Crawford pitched in Game Two thanks to Saturday's rain.
"I really wanted to win that game because we wanted to win 2-out-of-3, so I wanted to go with the sure thing," Lopez explained. "I thought (Crawford) would be a sure thing."
Earman struggled. Hard. He walked two, hit another batter, balked once, and gave up three hits on the way to allowing his first three runs of the season.
"Morgan's a young guy, and gave him a start. If we were scoring more runs I might have given him a little bit more wiggle room to pitch out of a jam."
Cody Moffett was next in line and also had his worst outing of the season. He issued three walks, threw a wild pitch, and gave up two hits of his own in just 2/3 of an inning.
"My thought was we weren't scoring a lot of runs, and so I wanted to keep it under control, and that's why I took (Earman) out."
Nathan Bannister also had a rough time on the mound. He also only lasted 2/3 of an inning, while giving up two runs on three hits.
After that, Tyler Parmenter and Xavier Borde both appeared in their third game of the weekend. Borde lasted two innings before running out of gas. He walked the final two batters he faced, but was still only charged with one earned run in the game, his first run allowed this season in six appearances. Parmenter picked up the final two outs of the fifth while giving up a base on balls of his own.
A pair of Arizona pitchers made their career debuts in the game. Austin Schnabel came in for Luke Soroko in the 7th, and recorded two outs without allowing a run. Evan Hebert started the 8th, got into some trouble, but worked out of it without giving up a run either.
"We gotta get 'em better," said Lopez. "They competed. They went out there and did the best they could."
The offensive lineup was a lot different than anything we've seen so far this year, and just like in the first two games, it didn't work either.
Scott Kingery continued his hot streak. He was the only Wildcat to register a multi-hit game. Kingery continues to set the table, but no one is able to pick him up right now.
On the Seton Hall side, the top of the lineup did all the damage it needed to. Leadoff hitter Zack Weigel went 3-for-4, walked twice, scored three times and drove in two, while two-hole hitter Chris Selden drove in four runs.
Arizona has no time to recover after this weekend's disaster. These three games were the first of a brutal stretch where the Wildcats play 15 games in 19 days, with highly-ranked Mississippi State visiting Tucson next weekend. First up though is Long Beach State on Tuesday (6 PM), and Wednesday (Noon).
Coach Lopez is looking forward to all these games though.
"Games are probably the best thing we can do right now," Lopez stated. "They look good in practice. We had a couple guys pitch today that pitched in the intrasquad on Tuesday that looked magnificent, like, lights out. Beautiful. And they obviously didn't do a very good job today. I think games are what we need right now."
"They gotta get comfortable playing against an enemy."