SACRAMENTO -- Senior Martin Vincelli-Simard finished with three hits, including a home run to go with his three RBI, while Jorge Bojorquez and Wehiwa Aloy added two hits apiece, but it wasn't enough to push the Sacramento State baseball team to a series win as the Hornets fell, 9-6, in the finale to UT Rio Grande Valley on Sunday afternoon at John Smith Field.
The result evened Sacramento State's record at 24-24 overall and 10-14 in Western Athletic Conference play, while the Vaqueros won the final two games of the series, improving to 26-20 overall and 12-12 in WAC play.
Vincelli-Simard, who hit .500 in the series against UTRGV, tied his career high with his three-hit performance, logging his sixth three-hit game of the season and the 11th of his career. Meanwhile, Aloy's two-hit game increased his team-best total to 25 multi-hit performances this season, while Bojorquez added the 14th multi-hit game of the year.
It was one swing by Vincelli-Simard that gave the Hornets the early lead as the senior cleared the wall in centerfield for his 13th home run of the season, scoring Aloy ahead of him for a 2-0 lead. The blast was the 31st of his career, giving him sole possession of second place on the school's all-time list, trailing only Harvey Hargrove and his 35 home runs from 1995-97.
Meanwhile, as a team, the Hornets have homered in each of their last seven games and now have 74 on the season. That total stands one shy of the 1997 squad for second on the all-time list and nine back of the all-time record of 83 slugged by the 1998 Sacramento State team.
UTRGV answered with a solo home run of its own in the second then rode the bat of Roberto Gonzalez, who slugged a pair of three-run home runs in the third and fifth innings to balloon the Vaqueros' lead to 7-2.
A Vincelli-Simard RBI single in the seventh closed the gap and Sacramento State plated three more in the eighth after loading the bases with two outs. Jeffery Heard doubled to the gap with one out, moved to third on a wild pitch and was there after Garet Crenshaw walked and Jacob Cortez was hit by a pitch.
That brought up Bojorquez, who skied a ball into short left centerfield that got lost in the high sky, falling between three Vaqueros and spinning away, allowing all three runs to score and pull the Hornets to within a pair.
A run in the ninth made it a 9-6 lead in favor of UTRGV, but the Hornets could not get any closer, rolling three ground balls to the left side to end the game.
Sacramento State returns to the diamond on Tuesday (May 9) as the Hornets host Causeway rival UC Davis at John Smith Field. First pitch is scheduled for 6 p.m. Sacramento State then heads to Southern California for the final road WAC series of the season over the weekend, taking on California Baptist on May 12-14 in Riverside, Calif.
