Jan. 26, 2001
TEMPE, Ariz. -- Backed behind solid pitching and clutch hitting, the University of Texas at Arlington Mavericks handed the No. 6 Arizona State Sun Devil baseball team a 5-3 defeat Friday in the season opener of the 2001 season in front of 1,901 fans at Packard Stadium.
UTA, who also opened their season last year with an upset of eventual College World Series participant Texas, was led by pitchers Pierce Loveless and Clint Faught who held the Sun Devil bats at bay with only eight hits. UTA has now beaten a ranked team to open the season in three of the past five seasons. Faught took the win out of the bullpen, allowing only one run in three innings of work.
Arizona State was its own worst enemy, leaving 10 men on base and failing in several crucial situations when they could have grabbed a lead. Down 3-0 through four innings, ASU scored two in the fourth to bring the game to within one. The Sun Devils scored the equalizer in the seventh on a single to left field by Dennis Wyrick.
With ASU preseason All-American closer Eric Doble (0-1) on the mound, the Mavericks struck for two runs in the top of the ninth inning. ASU was in position to take the lead in the eighth with no outs and the bases loaded, but senior third baseman Mike Lopez grounded into a double play Nick Walsh grounded out to first base to kill the potential rally. ASU loaded the bases in the ninth and had 2000 Pac-10 Player of the Year Casey Myers at the plate, but could not prevail as Myers hit a groundball harmlessly to the second basemen to seal the win for the Mavericks.
UTA scored its two runs in the ninth behind four consecutive singles from the bottom four in the lineup. Third basemen Levi Ness pushed home the eventual game-winner with a sharp single up the middle. Jason Severson added an insurance run with a single to right field to score Jesus Morillo.
"You have to give a lot to this Texas-Arlington team because they came out here and were fearless and played a good game," said ASU head coach Pat Murphy, who endured his first season-opening loss in 14 seasons as a Division I head coach. "We just played way too tentative. Hopefully this serves as a wakeup call for us and we come out and play like the team that we know we are. They are out there playing with expectations of being No. 6 in the country, when they should just play baseball and let the rest take care of itself."
The Sun Devils were led by junior second baseman Brooks Conrad and sophomore shortstop Wyrick, who both tallied three hits. Starting pitcher and preseason All-American Jon Switzer took the no-decision, allowing three runs in five-plus innings of work. The two teams will do meet up in the second game of the three-game non-conference series at 1 p.m. at Packard Stadium. Junior Andy Torres (0-0, 0.00) will go for the Devils and junior Jason Bernosky (0-0, 0.00) will take to the mound for UTA. Texas-Arlington 5, Arizona State 3 (Jan 26, 2001 at Tempe, Ariz.) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Texas-Arlington..... 030 000 002 - 5 9 2 (1-0) Arizona State....... 000 200 100 - 3 8 0 (0-1) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Pitchers: Texas-Arlington - Loveless, Faught(7). Arizona State - Switzer, Pezely(6), Doble(9). Win-Faught(1-0) Loss-Doble(0-1) T-2:53 A-1901