CSUN Catches but Is Unable to Pass, 11-8 : College baseball: Matadors spend day getting even, finally lose after Santa Barbara’s five-run uprising in the ninth.

Mike Sims has spent four years in a crouch behind the plate at Cal State Northridge, so he definitely knows squat about baseball.

When Sims says that the Matadors should have chalked up a victory in Saturday’s nonconference home game with UC Santa Barbara, odds are pretty good that he’s correct.

“We should have won,” said Sims, a four-year starter. “We should have put it away, and we should have punched ‘em out on the mound.”

In those categories, it was strike one, strike two, strike three, as Santa Barbara broke open a tie game with five runs in the ninth to pull out an 11-8 victory.

The Matadors (31-16) never led, though they managed to tie three times, but fell back as often.

Northridge twice made up three-run deficits. In the seventh, the Matadors scored three runs on a two-run double by Sims--who has hit in 15 straight games--and a groundout by Keyaan Cook to move into a 6-6 tie. Yet Northridge, which left a runner in scoring position in the fourth through eighth innings, couldn’t quite get over the hump.

In the ninth, with the score still at 6-6, it all caved in on right-hander Marco Contreras, who gave up 11 earned runs and 16 hits, seven for extra bases.

Contreras (5-4) gave up the cycle in the inning, starting with a three-run homer by third baseman Rich Haar. A triple, double and single followed as Santa Barbara (22-27-1) took an 11-6 lead and chased Contreras.

Haar’s shot, his 14th, was the second three-run homer served up by Contreras, and the first was just as damaging. With the score tied, 3-3, in the fifth, Matt Bokemeier and Haar each singled with nobody aboard and two out. Haar’s hit came on an 0-and-2 pitch.

First baseman Jared Janke then hit a three-run homer over the wall in left, his 12th. Sims believed it never should have come to that.

“It was 0-2 (on Haar) and we should have had him,” said Sims who, along with Andy Hodgins, had three hits. “That opened the game up again. If you can’t make a quality 0-2 pitch, you’re in trouble.

“He left it over the plate. Man, those three-run homers will kill you.”

Cook hit a two-run homer with one out in the bottom of the ninth as the Matadors rallied back. But reliever Brian Stephenson (5-3), who gave up five runs in 3 1/3 innings, struck out Joey Arnold and Jason Shanahan to end it.

Right-hander Pat Bennett, from Crespi High, gave up one earned run over the first 5 2/3 innings for Santa Barbara.