USF baseball pushes win streak to 10 in 12-6 victory over Jacksonville

USF senior pitcher Ryan Valdes held Jacksonville scoreless over five innings of work Tuesday night in the Bulls' tenth straight win.
ORACLE FILE PHOTO

With ease, USF baseball secured its tenth straight win in dominating fashion.

The Bulls’ bats caught fire early, leading USF to a 12-6 victory over Jacksonville (6-7) at USF Baseball Stadium on Tuesday night.

Collecting 15 hits from 11 different players, the Bulls offense was potent throughout the night, plating 12 runs – tying their season high.

“Tonight was a good night offensively, no doubt,” USF coach Mark Kingston said. “I want to see our offense continue to get better, because if we do what we did on offense tonight, combined with our pitching and defense, we’ll be a really strong team moving forward.”

To make the win all the more impressive, it came against a Jacksonville squad that defeated the No. 2 Florida Gators, and narrowly lost to No. 5 FSU by just a run earlier in the season. 

“Without question that’s a good team over there,” starting pitcher Ryan Valdes said. “They came out and they swing it pretty well.”

“We knew that we had to attack the hitters, and our hitters knew that we needed to attack their pitcher. When we were able to get ahead, we knew that we could come out and put this team away.”

Valdes, a redshirt senior, pitched five shut-out innings for the Bulls, yielding two hits, and striking out seven, which tied his career high.

Following the exit of Valdes, the Bulls allowed six runs in the last four innings, but still held a firm grip on the lead.

The Bulls will be back in action on Wednesday night when Villanova (1-9) travels to Tampa.

“If you want to be an elite team, you have to beat the teams you’re supposed to beat,” Valdes said. “Tonight, we did that.”