Bulldogs take down Toreros’ touted ace

Even though the box score might suggest otherwise, University of San Diego coach Rich Hill insists his sophomore ace Brian Matusz had his good stuff working in Friday afternoon’s West Coast Conference baseball opener against Gonzaga.

The only problem, Hill added, was that Matusz’s good stuff wasn’t quite good enough to offset the aggressive approach GU took at the plate in disposing of his 20th-ranked Toreros 6-3 at Washington Trust Field before a record crowd of 822, the largest to attend a Bulldogs regular-season home game.

“It’s always been very tough for us to pitch to them,” Hill said of the Bulldogs (17-14), who roughed up Matusz, a 6-foot-4 left-hander who leads the nation in strikeouts, for 10 of their 12 hits and all six of their runs.

“Their hitting plan is excellent – one of the best in the country, I feel. So my hat’s off to them. They took it to one of the best pitchers in the country today.”

The key for the Zags on this warm, brilliant spring day, was the way they jumped on nearly every fastball Matusz served up and put it in play – especially in the first two innings when they scored four times on two-run hits by Dustin Colclough and Evan Wells.

Colclough came through with his clutch two-out single in the first inning, and Wells followed with his one-out double just inside the first-base line in the second to make a winner out of Josh Monroe (4-1) and a loser out of Matusz (5-2), who came into the game having struck out 92 batters in 57 1/3 innings.

“We did a good job of getting on his fastball early, which made him adjust his pitch pattern a little bit,” GU coach Mark Machtolf said of Matusz, who struck out four in the 6 2/3 innings he worked. “I thought our guys did a good job against a quality pitcher.

“We were pretty efficient, especially in those first two innings. That was a huge two-out hit by Colclough to get us going. That could have changed the entire game right there if we don’t get that hit in the first.”

Matusz retired the first batter he faced, but then gave up a single to Bryan Winston and a double off the wall in left-center field to Darin Holcomb to put himself in early trouble. Still, he was on the verge of working out of it after retiring Ryan Weigand on an infield pop, only to have Colclough line a hard single to left.

When Wells added his clutch double in the second, USD (22-11), which had won eight of its previous nine games, was forced into a catch-up mode the rest of the game.

The Toreros managed to close to within 4-3 on Jordan Abruzzo’s two-run home run in the fourth and Sean Nicol’s run-scoring single in the fifth. But an inning later, left-hander Chris Highmark came on in relief of Monroe and pitched two scoreless innings before handing the ball over to junior closer Brandon Harmon in the ninth.

“Monroe did enough; he really battled,” Machtolf said of his senior starter, who gave up eight hits and all three of USD’s runs, while striking out three and walking just one. “Then Chris came in, because (the Toreros) have so many left-handed hitters, and did a nice job.

“And, of course, Harmon did what he does. He’s really good coming out of the pen.”

Monroe credited his control for his early effectiveness.

“My slider was pretty good and so was my changeup,” he said. “But I just located my pitches, in general, pretty well, which was the key. And it helped, too, that the guys picked me up pretty good early on by scoring those four runs.

“That added to my confidence and made it a lot easier to do what I needed to do, which was just throw strikes and let the hitters get themselves out.”

Gonzaga scored its final two runs in the seventh on RBI singles by Aaron McGuinness and Mike Terry.

The teams meet again today at 1 p.m. before closing their three-game series with another 1 p.m. matchup Sunday.