The nineteenth ranked San Diego Toreros continued their march thru the state of Oregon with a 4-1 win over Oregon St. Monday night at Goss Stadium in Corvallis.
After sweeping the Portland Pilots over the weekend, the West Coast Conference leaders extended their winning streak to eight games, largely behind the hitting of Tony Strazzara, who drove in the first three San Diego runs.
Kraig Sitton made his first career collegiate start for Oregon St., and retired 16 straight batters in the 5 2/3 innings he worked. But before that, Strazzara singled to stake San Diego to a 1-0 lead to start the game, and got the lead back for good for the Toreros in the sixth inning with another RBI single, chasing Sitton in the process.
Stefan Romero had tied the game in the fourth inning with his third home run in four games. It was Romero's twelfth homer of the season, pulling him within one of USC's Ricky Oropesa for the Pac-10 lead.James Nygren, Matt Boyd, and Ryan Gorton all paraded in from the Beaver bullpen, but in the eighth inning Strazzara, San Diego's clean-up hitting second baseman delivered another run scoring single, pushing Chris Engell across.
Tyler Waldron took over, and got a double play ball, but James Meador scored in the process, for San Diego's last run.
Sitton (1-2) took the loss for Oregon St., while San Diego starter Chris Jensen (2-0) went six innings for the win. Matt Thompson struck out six while scattering three OSU hits over the last three innings for the save.
San Diego (31-16, 15-0) makes one more stop in their Oregon tour, taking on Oregon tomorrow night at PK Park in Eugene, before heading back to southern California.
Oregon St. (24-18, 7-11) will resume action Friday night, hosting the Washington Huskies (25-22, 8-10) in the first game of a weekend Pac-10 series at Goss Stadium.
The Huskies are in eighth place in the conference, and the Beavers in ninth, but Washington is only two games out of second place, and Oregon St. three, so a strong series by either team could boost them right back into the post season race.