CSUN Arm, Hammer Strike Foe : Baseball: Sharts’ pitching, Clayton’s home run beat Riverside.

It doesn’t sport the flashiest statistics, but the Cal State Northridge pitching staff has become a winner by merely bending, rarely breaking.

Northridge entered Saturday’s California Collegiate Athletic Assn. baseball game against UC Riverside with an earned-run average of 5.09. But for the Matadors, who average 6.8 runs a game, five runs are not difficult to overcome.

Scott Sharts can attest to that after his 7-6 complete-game victory over the Highlanders at Matador Field.

The sophomore from Simi Valley High gave up 11 hits and walked five, yet raised his record to 3-1 and gave the streaking Matadors (31-16, 18-6 in conference play) a sweep of the three-game series.

Northridge holds a 1 1/2-game lead over the Highlanders (33-15, 17-8) in the CCAA standings with six conference games left.

The Matadors have won six of their past seven games and nine consecutive CCAA contests while Riverside has lost four of its past five conference games.

“We’re on a good hot streak,” said Sharts, who struck out a season-high 11 batters. “Our bats have been uncontrollable over the last three weeks. We cooled down a little today, but we had the right hits at the right time.”

No hit loomed larger than Craig Clayton’s two-out, two-run home run in the sixth, which snapped a 5-5 tie.

Trailing, 5-4, after 5 1/2 innings, Northridge tied the score when Mike Solar walked with one out and scored when left fielder Scott Hayward dropped Andy Hodgins’ fly ball to deep left-center field.

Hodgins moved to third on Mike Sims’ groundout to set the stage for Clayton’s 10th home run, a drive to left.

“I didn’t think it was going out,” said Clayton, who was three for five and drove in four runs. “I thought I got under the ball too much, but (Hayward) kept going back and back.”

Clayton, whose two-run double in the fourth gave Northridge a 4-1 lead, took Sharts off the hook with his blast. The 6-foot-6 right-hander had been shelled for five hits and four runs in the fifth.

“After we scored those runs in the fourth, I kind of had a letdown,” Sharts admitted. “I wasn’t bearing down like I should have.”

Riverside tied the score, 4-4, on Ruben Ayala’s one-out, three-run double off the wall in left.

Sharts struck out Logan Ostrander for the second out, but Hayward drove in Ayala with a ground-rule double to center. Chad Townsend singled Ostrander to third, and John Holmes walked to load the bases.

Mark Saugstad, who started the inning with a double to right-center, forced Holmes at second to end the rally.

Sharts, whose RBI groundout in the third inning tied the score, 1-1, was in trouble again in the seventh and eighth before retiring the side in order--the last two batters on strikeouts--in the ninth.

Ostrander doubled off the wall in left-center to start the seventh. Holmes walked two outs later, and both runners moved up a base on a wild pitch. But Saugstad flied out to center to quell the rally.

In the eighth, Riverside scored a run on a walk and two singles, but Sharts struck out Ostrander and Hayward to end the inning with runners at second and third.

“This was a very big series for us, but we don’t have it wrapped up by any means,” Northridge Coach Bill Kernen said. “We’ve put ourselves in a good position, but it’s not over. We still have to go up to (Cal Poly) San Luis Obispo for three games and we play two of three games at Cal State L. A.”