Arizona baseball crushes Oregon to clinch 5th straight series over Ducks

A night after needing every run to pull out the victory, the Arizona Wildcats made sure to put Saturday’s game out of reach as quickly as possible.

The UA used a pair of 5-run innings to blow past Oregon, winning 15-2 at Hi Corbett Field. The Wildcats (16-6, 3-2 Pac-12) clinched their fifth consecutive series over the Ducks (11-6, 2-3) and haven’t lost a home series to Oregon since 2012.

Jacob Berry had four hits to improve his average to .450, Branden Boissiere went 3 for 5 with 4 RBI and Ryan Holgate had a game-breaking bases-clearing triple that resulted in a “Little League grand slam” during Arizona’s 5-run third.

After Oregon took a 1-0 lead on a Kenyan Yovan home run in the top of the first, with Tanner O’Tremba’s RBI single tying it in the bottom of the second.

The Wildcats broke it open in third, benefitting from Oregon starter Cullen Kafka losing his control and the Duck defense falling apart. Holgate tripled off the glove of Oregon CF Robby Ashford with the bases loaded, scoring three, then came home when the throw in to third went into Oregon’s dugout.

A second Ducks error was followed by a run-scoring triple from O’Tremba. Oregon entered the weekend with only three errors and no unearned runs allowed but in two games at Hi Corbett have committed four errors leading to three unearend runs.

A second 5-run frame in the sixth made it 11-1 and the Wildcats added one more runs in the seventh and another three in the eighth.

That was more than enough offense for starter Garrett Irvin, who had his best outing of the year to improve to 1-1. The junior left-hander needed only 85 pitches to go seven innings, allowing a run on six hits.

Arizona can go for the sweep Sunday at 12 p.m. PT at Hi Corbett.