COLLEGE ROUNDUP : Cal Poly San Luis Obispo Completes Sweep of CSUN

It would be easy to look at the score book from Sunday’s California Collegiate Athletic Assn. baseball game at San Luis Obispo Stadium and conclude that Bill Daly’s three-run, two-out, home run in the 10th inning was the difference in Cal Poly San Luis Obispo’s 12-9 victory over Cal State Northridge.

But Matador third baseman Denny Vigo knows better.

Vigo had three hits--including his 19th home run of the season--but they couldn’t stop Northridge (31-19, 18-9 in conference play) from dropping its third game in a row. That’s because the Matadors again failed to pitch well.

Northridge trails first-place UC Riverside (36-16, 20-9) by a game in the CCAA standings with three conference games left--all against Cal State Los Angeles.

Riverside concludes CCAA play at home against Cal Poly Pomona on Tuesday.

“We have to make the plays on defense and back up our pitching to win,” Vigo said. “(Coach Bill Kernen) has been telling us all season that you have to do three things to win games: Pitch well, play defense and hit. And we only did one of those in this series.”

The Matadors had 16 hits Sunday, but pitchers Vale Lopez and Craig Clayton allowed 14--including seven for extra bases.

San Luis Obispo’s victory gave the Mustangs (22-27, 13-14) a sweep of the three-game weekend series and the five-game season series with CSUN.

Trailing, 9-7, after 6 1/2 innings, San Luis Obispo scored single runs in the seventh and eighth to tie, the final run scoring on an error.

After neither team scored in the ninth, Clayton tripled with two outs in the CSUN 10th, but Scott Richardson flied out to end the inning.

Pat Kirby walked to start the Cal Poly 10th and went to second on a sacrifice. After a strike out, Matt Drake walked. The fourth ball to Drake was intentional and gave Daly, who had hit a two-run home run Saturday, some added incentive.

“You’ve got to go up there with fire in your eyes in that situation,” Daly said. “One of the guys was telling me earlier that you’ve got to take it as an insult when you’re put in that situation.”

Daly acted plenty insulted, depositing a slider from Clayton (11-5) over the fence in left field.