The BYU baseball team lost to the University of Oregon 9-6 Monday afternoon at Miller Park.
Oregon jumped out to an early 4-0 lead after four innings, but the Cougars came back with two runs of their own in the bottom of the fifth.
The Cougars continued their comeback in the bottom of the sixth inning after Colton Shaver and David Clawson walked consecutively. Nate Favero then blasted a homer to right field and tied up the game at 5-5.
Sloppy defense gave the Ducks three unearned runs in the eighth inning, which turned out to be the story of the game.
“I think we had a couple guys not show up mentally and physically,” BYU coach Mike Littlewood said. “One of the trademarks of our teams is we are going to play good defense, and we just didn’t do that today.”
Out of the nine runs that the Ducks scored in the game, four of them came from errors by the Cougars.
Daniel Schneemann is normally an anchor for the BYU defense at shortstop, but he struggled against Oregon and had three errors.
“You need our shortstop to show up and play,” Littlewood said. “That was a big problem for us. Schneemann had a rough day, but we know he will come back and play great for us later this week.”
Littlewood said that he gathered the players after the game and spoke about how good the team can be, and how they pretty much beat themselves against the Ducks.
“There is no guessing how Oregon won this game,” Littlewood said. “They hit the ball and played well but we kind of gave it to them a little bit.”
The Cougars (14-12, 4-2 West Coast Conference) will square up against the Pacific Tigers (11-15, 2-7 WCC) in a three game series starting Thursday, 6:00 p.m. PDT in Stockton, Calif.
