New Combination Locks Up CSUN Win : College baseball: Matadors rely on pitching and defense to stump San Luis Obispo, 4-1.

The names are largely the same and most of the faces probably seemed familiar, but if it weren’t for those similarities, the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo baseball team might not have recognized its opponent Friday at Matador Field.

Cal State Northridge, only a year removed from playing conference games against San Luis Obispo in the NCAA Division II California Collegiate Athletic Assn., showed off its newfound attributes in the first game of a two-game series against the Mustangs.

The Matadors won, 4-1, thanks to, of all things, pitching and defense.

“We did everything right today,” said Northridge’s Scott Sharts, who pitched a five-hitter. “Everything we did was airtight and perfect.”

In winning for the fifth time in six games and improving to 24-10-1 overall, Northridge didn’t play anything like the team that scored nine and 10 runs on two occasions against San Luis Obispo last season but still lost all five games to the Mustangs.

Indeed, Northridge had 10 hits, but only two were for extra bases. Instead, the 20th-ranked Matadors relied on the right arm of Sharts, who benefited from some splendid glove work from, among others, Mike Solar, CSUN’s much-maligned shortstop.

Solar, who has a team-high 20 errors, bailed the Matadors out of a bases-loaded jam in the fifth inning, backhanding a two-hopper off the bat of Doug O’Neill and starting an inning-ending double play. “Mike turned a hard play into something that looked routine,” Sharts said. And he picked a pretty good time to do it too. The score was tied, 1-1, before Northridge scored single runs in the sixth, seventh and eighth innings.

“We had some opportunities and when you have them against a guy like Sharts, you’d better take advantage,” Mustang Coach Steve McFarland said. “We didn’t do it.”

San Luis Obispo, 13-12 and ranked fifth in Division II, scored its run on a pair of two-out singles and a stolen base in the first inning. After that, other than their fifth-inning uprising, the Mustangs went quietly.

Sharts, who struck out 11 and walked three, retired the last 11 batters. “He found an out pitch we couldn’t handle and just kept throwing it,” McFarland said.

That pitch was a slider, which Sharts used to consistently nip the outside corner.

“I’ve been able to use it effectively, get ahead of the count and get people out with it,” Sharts said. “I couldn’t even throw it for strikes earlier this season.”

While improving his record to 7-3 and lowering his earned-run average to 3.51, Sharts also scored two runs, including the game-winner.

After Kyle Washington’s third home run tied the score, 1-1, in the fourth, Sharts doubled down the left-field line to begin the sixth, moved to third on a wild pitch and scored on a ground out to the right side by Solar.

In the seventh, Northridge made it 3-1 on a walk, a single, an error and a double-play grounder that brought in a run. The Matadors added an insurance run in the eighth on a sacrifice fly by Washington.

Dan Chergey, a right-handed junkballer from Thousand Oaks High, took the loss--only his second in seven decisions.

Mixing a variety of off-speed pitches, Chergey kept Northridge batters off balance just as he did last season in two victories over the Matadors.

“We didn’t come out swinging the bats like we did against Hartford (a 19-0 win on Thursday), but we faced a better quality pitcher,” Sharts said. “This was another test for us and again we proved we can win even when we’re not scoring a bunch of runs.”

Notes

Northridge third baseman Denny Vigo sat out the game because of a right hamstring that is torn in two places. Vigo is available for pinch-hitting duty, but the earliest he will be back in the starting lineup is next weekend’s three-game series against United States International. . .

Ken Kendrena (5-1) will be the starting pitcher for Northridge today and Jon Ifland (2-1) is due to go for San Luis Obispo. Kendrena struck out 17 in 11 innings against UC Irvine in his last outing.