Fullerton feasts on Rebels' pitching

Deciding his team had been beaten up enough for the weekend, UNLV baseball coach Rod Soesbe preferred not to add to the Rebels' dejected outlook following still another one-sided loss to Cal State Fullerton on Sunday.

Instead of ripping into his 3-9 team, Soesbe looked to be compassionate. He was giving his players today off and hoping each of them had a mirror handy after a 13-2 defeat at the hands of the Titans at Wilson Stadium.

It was a setback that came on the heels of 16-6 and 21-14 losses Saturday and Friday, respectively.

"I'm hoping everyone will dig down a little deeper after this," Soesbe said. "That's about all I'm going to talk about with them. I feel we have a chance to be a good ballclub; actually, we do have a good ballclub but we're pressing a little bit."

The Rebels have lost four straight and their pitching staff looks overtaxed if not decimated. In the three losses to 14th-ranked CSF, the Titans scored in all but 11 of the 27 innings.

UNLV hitters, meanwhile, failed to collect an extra-base hit Sunday despite a steady, merciless wind that blew out toward right and center fields.

"It is hard to believe," Soesbe said of the Rebels being held to 10 singles by CSF's Matt Sorensen and Kirk Saarloos on a gritty afternoon where the hitters seemingly held every advantage. Sorensen, 2-0, a sophomore, worked the first eight innings before Saarloos tacked on a perfect ninth.

"We've got a lot of guys who are just following suit," Soesbe said. "Nobody's stepping up. We know we lost some games early that we should have won, and now we're not playing teams that are easy to beat."

That situation isn't apt to change for the better, as UNLV will play Nevada-Reno, Clemson, Creighton and Washington in the 19th annual Coors Desert Classic that runs Thursday through next Sunday at Wilson Stadium.

UNLV's pitching will have to come around or it will be a very long season. The staff ERA is at an even 9.00, with 108 earned runs allowed in 12 games, and staff ace Bryan Gidge saw his ERA go from 3.79 to 6.00 after permitting Fullerton to score eight runs in his five innings.

After using four pitchers both Friday and Saturday, Soesbe summoned freshman Joe Maruffi to make his first appearance of the season after Gidge, 2-1, was lifted. Maruffi was touched for five runs before senior Bill Scheffels finished strong and kept the Titans off the board while striking out five in 2 2/3 innings.

"No," Soesbe replied, when asked if he was worried about his pitchers. "We've just got to get them settled down. Today was a tough day for anyone to pitch, and Bryan was doing good until the fifth."

It was only 2-0 for Fullerton going into the fifth, but it batted around and scored six times that inning. Ryan Owens smacked a grand-slam homer to center for the big blow and he would homer again -- this time to right -- the following inning as the game completely got away from the Rebels.

Owens' five RBI for the game gave him 14 for the three-game series. Another thorn in the Rebels' side was Chris Beck, who had four hits and three RBI Sunday for a weekend total of 10 hits and nine RBI.

Fullerton is 8-3 and has won seven straight.

No UNLV player had more than two hits and slugger Ryan Ludwick twice left the bases loaded in what could have been crucial at-bats. The Rebels scored once in the fifth on an RBI single by Eliott Sarabia and once in the seventh when Ryan Hamill made no effort to get out of the way of a pitch that hit him with the bases loaded.

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