SACRAMENTO -- Sophomore Jeffery Heard finished 3-for-3 with a double and an RBI while freshman Wehiwa Aloy drove in a pair as the Sacramento State baseball team took care of its Causeway rival UC Davis with a 7-5 victory on Tuesday night at John Smith Field.
The win pushed the Hornets to 25-24 overall on the year, taking two-of-three from the Aggies to clinch the season series and earn hosting rights for two of the three meetings in 2024. Sacramento State also improved to 9-3 in midweek games in 2023 — the most since the 2014 squad finished with nine.
Led by a pair of home runs from lead-off hitter Damian Stone, UC Davis fell to 17-27 overall on the year.
Heard's three-hit night tied his career high set at Saint Mary's on April 26 last season, adding a walk and a run scored to his final stat line. Freshman JP Smith — one of four other Hornets to have a hit on the night — laced a single through the left side in the fifth, extending his team-best hitting streak to 15 consecutive games, the longest since Matt Smith finished with a 16-game streak in 2021 and matching Gabe Jacobo (2008) and Ray Brown (1994) for the 14th-longest streak in school history.
Sacramento State wasted little time in scoring the game's first run as Jorge Bojorquez led-off the home half of the first with a walk and moved all the way to third on a pair of wild pitches. Aloy then cashed in on the Aggie miscues, bouncing a single up the middle to easily plate Bojorquez for a 1-0 lead.
The Hornets then broke the game open with a big fourth inning, loading the bases with two outs on a Heard single and back-to-back walks to Bojorquez and Jacob Cortez. After a pitching change, Aloy was hit in the hip by a 2-1 pitch, driving home Heard for the 2-0 lead.
A miscue in the outfield then proved costly for UC Davis as Martin Vincelli-Simard's fly ball to the gap in left center was dropped by the fielder, allowing all three runners to score and give the home team a 5-0 lead.
The Aggies began to chip away, posting single runs in the third, fourth, and fifth innings, scoring twice on home runs by Stone and adding an RBI ground ball to cut the deficit to two, but Sacramento State answered in the home half of the fifth.
Vincelli-Simard had a sure double taken away when his ball down the line hit the umpire, holding the senior to a single, but Smith came though to move him over anyway with his single. A fly ball to right field put runners on the corners for Heard, who sliced a ball into right to drive Vincelli-Simard home for the 6-3 lead. A few pitches later, Smith was able to score on a passed ball to make it 7-3 and the Hornets held on from there.
UC Davis added a run in the sixth on an infield single with the bases loaded, but stranded all three when Wesley Harper (2-1) induced a pair of fly balls to end the inning, and added another in the eighth on a throwing error for the final 7-5 score.
Harper allowed only two hits over his 1.1 innings of work, followed by the trio of Jaxon Byrd, Kevin Haynes, and Jack Zalasky, who combined to allow only the unearned run on one hit while striking out five. Zalasky nailed down his 10th save of the season, pitching a perfect ninth with a pair of strikeouts.
The save was also Zalasky's 25th of his career, putting him one shy of Mike Frame (1987-89) for second on the school's career list, while his 91st career appearance ties Brandon Creel (2010-13) for second on the all-time chart.
Sacramento State hits the road for the final time in the regular season, heading to Southern California this weekend for a three-game Western Athletic Conference series at California Baptist on May 12-14.
