In a back-and-forth affair, Fullerton College was unable to defeat Southwestern losing 11-9 on Feb. 25, 2025, at home in Fullerton. The offense did not get going until the bottom of the second inning when the Hornets struck first.
Diego Vasquez began the rally with a two-out single to left field. After a pitching change made by Southwestern, Noah Rodriguez drove in the first run of the game with an RBI double to left center field. Then Nate Pone, who went four for six at the plate, gave them a 2-0 lead with an RBI single to center field.
“On my first at-bat on that RBI double, I was going in there with a new pitcher. I was like, ‘I’m gonna hunt a pitch out in front and see what I can do.’ I was able to get a good enough pitch and do something good with it,” said Rodriguez.
Fullerton’s starting pitcher, Julian Castro, retired the first six batters of the game through the first two innings, then got out of a jam with runners on first and third with a groundout to third to end the inning.
In the top of the fourth inning, Southwestern scored three runs. The rally started with a Maddox Haley, who went four for five with a single to center field, followed by another hit to center field and the runner advancing to third on a fielding error. With runners on first and third and no outs, Matthew Duran came up to the plate and hit a two-run RBI double to left, putting the Jaguars on the board and tying the game at two all.
After a pitching change by Fullerton and a base hit to left field to advance the runner to third, Jorge Garcia hit one in the hole at shortstop for an infield RBI single to give Southwestern their first lead of the game at 3-2.
Fullerton came back in the bottom of the fourth with Pone making it to first on an error and stealing second to get in scoring position. Jake Larson who went four for six at the plate with 2 RBIs came up to the plate and hit a one-out RBI single to left to tie the score at 3-3.
“I felt good with my approach today. I was trying to use the middle of the field, stay on a line and just take whatever the pitcher gave me and sit on that heater,” said Larson.
In the bottom of the fifth inning, Fullerton scored three runs. After back-to-back walks and a sacrifice bunt to advance the runners to second and third with one out, Rodriguez came up to the plate with a new pitcher on the mound. Rodriguez hit one into left field off the wall for a two run RBI double to put Fullerton up 5-3.
“I came back in the fifth inning and I just decided that I was gonna hunt something that was out front again and try to do some damage,” said Rodriguez. That was followed by Pone’s RBI single up the middle to drive in Rodriguez to make it 6-3.
In the top of the seventh inning, Southwestern came through with four runs. After an infield single and a base hit to right field, Haley came up to the plate and hit a three run homer to left field to tie the game up at 6-6. After a pitching change, Garcia came up to bat with two outs and a runner on second and hit a single into shallow right field to drive in a run and give Southwestern a 7-6 lead.
“We let their best player, unfortunately, beat us. [Haley] had a three run home, he’s a really good player, and we talked about it before. Letting their best player beat when we said we’re not gonna let that guy beat us would be walks or gets a strikeout, or a single. And follow kind of our game plan and we didn’t do that,” said Head Coach Chad Baum.
Fullerton came back in the bottom of the seventh inning with two runs of their own to take back the lead. With one out, Pone started the rally with an infield single that stayed fair down the third base line. After a wild pitch advanced Pone to second and a foul-out to first base, Trevor Schmidt came up to the plate with two outs and on the first pitch hit an RBI single to right field. Then Jake Starr hit an RBI triple to right field to give Fullerton an 8-7 lead.
Southwestern in the top of the eighth inning scored four runs again. The rally started with an Erik Polanco single to center field. After stealing second base with one out, Polanco advanced to third on a base hit to left field, followed by a walk to load the bases. After a pitching change bringing in Ashton McNaughton, Duran cleared the bases with a three run RBI double down the third base line to give Southwestern the lead for good at 10-8.
Fullerton made another pitching change bringing in Enrique Hernandez. With a runner on third and one out, Andrew Guevara drove in a run with an RBI single to right field which made it 11-8.
Larson felt that the team did not execute the game plan. “I don’t think we did, no. All week we’ve been harping on the errors and the infield, as well as the free passes from the pitchers and today we didn’t execute that, so just got to work on it and get back at it tomorrow,” said Larson.
Fullerton scored one run in the bottom of the ninth inning on an RBI single from Larson to drive in Pone for the final run of the game.
The Hornets (9-8) will travel to play Bakersfield on Thursday, Feb. 27, for another non-conference matchup.
