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The Daily Wildcat

The Daily Wildcat

 

Arizona baseball sweeps Oregon to improve to 22-6

Arizona+baseball+infielder+Scott+Kingery+%2825%29+prepares+to+swing+during+Arizonas+13-4+win+against+Oregon+at+Hi+Corbett+Field+on+Sunday.+Kingery+and+the+Wildcats+swept+Oregon+to+improve+to+22-6+on+the+season.
Alex McIntyre

Arizona baseball infielder Scott Kingery (25) prepares to swing during Arizona’s 13-4 win against Oregon at Hi Corbett Field on Sunday. Kingery and the Wildcats swept Oregon to improve to 22-6 on the season.

This weekend called for another series sweep for the Arizona baseball team after the Wildcats took down No. 18 Oregon to improve to a 22-6, 7-2 Pac-12 Conference record.

“Obviously, that’s a good weekend,” Arizona coach Andy Lopez said. “I was really pleased with [Xavier] Borde today; he did a marvelous job.”

Borde earned the save for Sunday’s game, pitching 3.1 innings while allowing no runs on one hit and recording six strikeouts.

Cody Moffett earned his first win of the season.

“I thought Moffett did a good job, and Borde was a plus,” Lopez said.

Leading the offense were second baseman Scott Kingery and right fielder Zach Gibbons.

The win marked the sixth straight for Arizona. The Wildcats recorded their first back-to-back conference sweep since 2013 and swept Oregon for the first time since 2009.

Lopez has a different mentality than last year with six straight conference wins.

“I’ve never had a team not play hard, and last year was such a disaster, so that was the mission for these guys: to play hard,” Lopez said. “They can take a punch, and they can gather themselves and rally back and deliver a punch.”

Kingery started his first game of the weekend on Saturday after sitting out during Friday’s game with the flu. Kingery hit a home run over the scoreboard in his first at-bat back to record the first run for Arizona in the bottom of the first.

“It was good to get back out there,” Kingery said. “I definitely missed playing with the team on Friday night, but I’m glad they came out with the win. It just felt good to get back out there and finish off the sweep.”

Kingery hit 3-for-5 during the final weekend game, despite still feeling ill.

Lopez said the team has gotten more consistent in the offense throughout the lineup.

“It’s fun when it evens out,” Lopez said, “because you kind of hate to throw the burden at the two guys at the top, Kingery and Newman, but that’s good now.”

Arizona had 11 hits as a team and beat the Ducks 9-5 for the series win on Saturday.

Pitcher Nathan Bannister got the win after allowing three hits and one run in three innings, improving to 5-0 on the season.

Kingery explained what has been working for this year’s team compared to last year’s.

“Our offense has done a great job on jumping on people early and in the middle innings,” he said. “Just being relentless out there, and we never get complacent. We just keep trying to tag on more runs, and the pitching has been doing really good at keeping the run total low, so that’s all working together right now.”

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