Cal Baseball: Bears Beat Former Pac-12 Foe Utah 9-4
Cal opens their four game homestand in Berkeley with a 9-4 bullpen-game victory over the Utes
The California Golden Bears Men’s Baseball team returned to Evans Diamond at Stu Gordon Stadium for a 6:00 PM game in Berkeley against the once-Pac-12 and now-Big 12 Utah Utes for a lone matchup on a cold March night. Cal is coming off a series loss against the Duke Blue Devils, after coming out of the gates hot with a 14-1 win on Friday, but dropping both Saturday and Sunday’s matchups via errors, walks, and wild pitches, dropping them to 7-8. Utah began their season with back-to-back sweeps over the Pepperdine Waves and San Diego State Aztecs and came into Tuesday night’s game at 11-4, having not played a Big 12 in-conference matchup thus far.
The sturdy Golden Bears went for a second consecutive bullpen game on their lone weekday matchup, just as they had against CSU Bakersfield last Wednesday, this time relying on relief pitcher David Shaw to make his first start as an “opener” of the season. Shaw got the game started with a first-pitch Matt Flaharty groundout to Cade Campbell at third and struck out Core Jackson looking before walking Tyler Quinn in four consecutive pitches out of the zone. He got out of the inning with a pop fly to Smaldino in foul territory to end his inning and day on the mound.
The Utes went to Jr. pitcher Lucas Boesen for his second start and fifth appearance of the 2025 season for Tuesday’s matchup against the Bears, and on the first pitch of the bottom half of the first inning, DH Jarren Advincula singled down the left field line to reach base safely for his 11th straight game. He would score on a hit-and-run double by Seth Gwynn to give the Bears an early 1-0 lead before Campbell, Tayman, and Moutzouridis would go down in order to end the inning.
JJ Hollis took over for the top half of the 2nd for the Bears’ pitching staff, and after getting Austen Roellig to strike out on a 2-2 fastball up in the zone, he gave up a double to Kaden Carpenter and then hit Jake Long and Santino Panaro with back-to-back pitches to load the bases for Derek Smith. Smith hit a sacrifice fly to Gwynn in centerfield to score Carpenter- and the next batter, Matt Flaharty, singled to the right side of the field to score Jake Long. The Bears would give up one more run in the inning from a throwing error to first by Max Handron on a ground ball to second base but would get out of the inning as Smaldino would recover the ball and fire it home, with Flaharty tagged out trying to score on the overthrow, as the Utes took a 3-1 lead.
Handron would try and make up for his error in the bottom half of the 2nd against Boesen, as he ripped a double to right field to start the inning for the Golden Bears- but Birge, Smaldino, and French could not plate him home as Cal would go down without a fight and left Handron in scoring position. Hollis stayed in the game for the top of the 3rd inning, getting two quick outs on balls in play before Roellig reached on a dropped popfly by French in right field, and Carpenter on a base hit single. Hollis would get Long to pop up to Campbell at third to get out of the inning with no damage done, and the Bears still down by two.
The Utes decided to go to the bullpen in the bottom of the 3rd inning by swapping Georgia Tech transfer Demitri Diamant in for Boesen, who finished his night with 2.0 innings pitched, three hits, one earned run, no walks, and two strikeouts. Diamant retired Advincula and Gwynn back-to-back before Cade Campbell reached on a base hit to center field, but Tayman would fly out to center to end the inning there and kept the Bears’ bats quiet.
Hollis would face two batters in the top of the 4th and surrender a lead-off double to Panaro before getting Smith to pop-up in foul territory to Smaldino. Mike Neu brought in Oliver de la Torre in relief for Hollis, and de la Torre was able to get out of the inning with another pop-up in foul grounds to Smaldino and a weak groundball out in front of Birge that he fired to first to strand the runner at second.
Diamant came back out for the Utes in the bottom of the 4th inning, getting Moutzouridis to fly out to left, allowing Handron to reach on a walk, and retiring Birge on a pop-fly to center field. Smaldino was able to connect with a 0-2 fastball low and inside for a base hit passed the diving shortstop, and both Handron and Smaldino would advance on a wild pitch to put two runners in scoring position for an opportunity to tie the game for Jacob French. French ripped a three-run home run to left field to give the Bears a 4-3 lead, with the next batter, Advincula, walking to end Diamant’s night. de la Torre would retire the side in the top of the 5th to end his night with 1.2 innings pitched, no hits allowed, no walks, and one strikeout; he got all five batters out that he faced.
Campbell got the Bears rolling in the bottom of the 5th with a lead-off single to left center field that would bring in Utes Freshman reliever Easton Jones for his fifth appearance out of the pen this season, and after working a 3-2 count to Ryan Tayman- Tayman hit a monster home run over the RSF in left field to put the bears ahead 6-3.
The game remained quiet through the 8th as Logan Piper settled in for the Bears on the mound and kept the Utes out of reach without allowing a run in three innings. Cal added some extra insurance runs with a Jacob French RBI-double in the bottom of the 8th, and scoring on a stolen base overthrow, as well as a Campbell sac-fly-RBI to take a 9-3 lead into the top of the 9th inning.
Piper remained in the game for the 9th, giving up a base hit and immediate wild pitch to put Flaharty in scoring position for Jackson to plate him home on an RBI-single to right, but that would be it for Utah, as Tyler Quinn would ground out to Jack Johnson (who took over at second base for Handron) to end the game. Final score: Cal 9, Utah 4. W: de la Torre (1-2) L: Diamant (0-1) S: Piper (1).
Utah drops to 11-5 and will play its first-ever Big 12 conference game at Kansas State on Friday. California moves to 8-8 (1-2 ACC) on the year and returns home on Friday to host the No. 23 University of Virginia (DIBaseball) for their first-ever home ACC series in Berkeley. Friday’s game will begin at 6:00 PM PT, Saturday’s at 2:00 PM, and Sunday’s at 1:00 PM- with a St. Patrick’s Day celebration event for those in attendance at Stu Gordon Stadium.
Tickets are available online here, and each game will be streamed on ACCNX through ESPN+.
Thanks, JB, for the excellent rundown. When you say “over the RSF” re. Tayman’s dinger, do you mean it was so far back on the roof that nobody saw it bounce?