Arizona baseball recap: Nathan Bannister pitches Wildcats to 3-1 win over Oregon State

In pretty much the exact opposite of Friday's game, the Arizona Wildcats took down the Oregon State Beavers 3-1 on Friday.

Nathan Bannister (W, 6-1), who was making his first career collegiate start, worked in and out of jams throughout his career-long 6 1/3 innings on Saturday. The junior righty gave up eight hits and two walks, but only one earned run, which came in the fourth inning.

Arizona (24-12, 9-8 Pac-12) responded in the top of the fifth by taking a 2-1 lead. After starting the inning with two strikeouts, Cody Ramer walked, Joseph Maggi singled, and Justin Behnke walked to load the bases for Scott Kingery.

The nation's leading hitter took advantage, smacking a single through the left side to score the two runs.

From there it was all pitching for Arizona. Bannister worked his way into the 7th, and gave way to new closer Tyger Talley. Talley got the final eight outs of the game while surrendering a hit and also hitting a batter along the way.

The third and final run for Arizona came in the ninth from former closer and new Sunday starter Bobby Dalbec. The sophomore third baseman went opposite field for his 11th home run of the season, getting the ball out over the right field fence.

The win sets up a rubber game between Dalbec and OSU pitcher Travis Eckert. The game is scheduled to start at 1 PM PT on Sunday afternoon. Situations like these are presumably why Andy Lopez has Dalbec in the Sunday slot. A win here would be enormous moving forward for the Wildcats.