Sacramento Takes Cuts, Rips CSUN : College baseball: Hornets score 5 on 7 consecutive hits in eighth inning of 10-6 victory.

What is silver and goes whack, whack, whack, whack, whack, whack, whack?

Unfortunately for Marco Contreras, the answer on Friday was seven Cal State Sacramento bats in the eighth inning.

Sacramento scored five times in the eighth on seven hits in a row to defeat Northridge, 10-6, in a Western Athletic Conference game at Hornet Field.

The game was gone before Contreras knew what hit him, and so was a five-game winning streak for Northridge (14-11, 3-1 in WAC play).

The senior right-hander had given up two earned runs and six hits entering the inning when everything caved in. Quickly.

“It’s kinda tough,” Contreras said quietly. “I pitched seven quality innings, then gave up (those hits). I know I’m better than that.”

With one out, Jason Beeman singled and Josh Kirtlan homered to left, giving Sacramento a 7-6 lead.

The next five Sacramento batters singled and three more runs scored to extend the lead to four. Nine batters went to the plate and they liked what they saw. Contreras (3-4) threw only 17 pitches in the inning.

“I can’t explain it,” Contreras said. “I don’t know why it happened. It (ticks) me off.”

Coach Bill Kernen knew why the Matadors lost and it had little to do with Contreras’ eighth inning.

Northridge committed four errors, leading to three unearned runs.

The Matadors left the bases loaded in the seventh and runners at second and third in the eighth.

Kernen swore he could see the defeat coming from miles away, even though his team held the lead on three occasions and came back from a 3-1 deficit. When the chips were down, Northridge failed to execute.

“I’d have gone to Vegas on this one,” Kernen said. “I’d have bet money that this game wouldn’t work out. . . .

“We should have been up, 7-1. It was a gift. We did it all ourselves.”

Sacramento (12-10, 2-2) turned a pair of errors by shortstop Chad Thornhill into a 3-1 lead through four innings, but the Matadors began playing long ball with left-hander Mike Eby, a graduate of Westlake High.

First baseman Jason Shanahan clubbed a three-run homer in the fifth to give Northridge a short-lived 4-3 lead. Jonathan Campbell slammed a solo homer in the sixth, his first, for a 5-4 lead that lasted all of two pitches.

Beeman opened the home half of the sixth with a homer to tie the score, 5-5. Northridge finally chased Eby--who gave up six earned runs in as many innings--with a run in the seventh to take a 6-5 lead, but the bats were silenced thereafter.

Steve Thobe, a 6-foot-6 right hander who started the game as the designated hitter, pitched three innings of one-hit relief, though it wasn’t exactly uneventful. With a run across, the bases loaded and one out in the seventh, Thobe (1-1) retired Tyler Nelson on a pop fly. Joey Arnold, who homered earlier, lined out to first and Northridge settled for a 6-5 lead.

In the eighth, with runners at second and third, Thobe struck out cleanup hitter Kevin Howard for the third out. Howard, who hit for the cycle and drove in eight runs Wednesday, struck out four times with three runners at third base.

“We had several opportunities to deliver the knockout punch,” said Shanahan, who had three hits and drove in four runs. “It definitely came back to bite us.”