The first time Arizona lost back-to-back games this season it rebounded with a victory highlighted by its performance at the plate. The Wildcats went into Sunday's matchup against Air Force coming off two difficult losses to the Falcons on Saturday and Wichita State on Friday night.
In Saturday's loss to Air Force it was the offense that struggled, which has not a frequent occurrence this season, as the Wildcats mustered just four hits and two runs in that game. Head coach Jay Johnson had confidence that his hitters would respond and they did just that Sunday afternoon by reaching double-digit runs for the seventh time this season in a 14-5 win over the Falcons.
Arizona (12-4) had an answer for every potential Air Force breakthrough on Sunday after taking an early 3-0 lead. When the Falcons tied up the game 4-4 in the fourth inning UA responded with a run of its own before exploding for five runs in the fifth inning to gain control.
The Wildcats collected four extra base hits, drew six walks and had nine different players contribute with at least one hit in the win to wrap up a 2-2 weekend for Arizona. The two UA players who had more than one hit on Sunday are two of the team's most experienced and important pieces.
Center fielder Donta' Williams and shortstop Jacob Blas shined in the win as both picked up two RBIs apiece and each came across the plate four times to account for eight UA runs. Williams went 2 for 2 in his plate appearances with a home run, a walk and a free base after being hit with a pitch.
Blas had arguably his best day at the plate this season as he finished the game with three hits in five plate appearances.
"I feel like baseball is one of those sports where you have to bounce back as soon as possible," Blas said about the big day for the offense coming off Saturday's loss. "It's not always gonna go perfect, and I feel like our team has done a really good job this year of responding. We need to make sure we can do that on a consistent basis, but also take those games and try to see what went wrong so it doesn't happen again in the future."
On the mound the Wildcats are still a bit of a work in progress, but managing adversity has been a theme with that group as well. No player has arguably been better at it this year than senior reliever Preston Price who Johnson said he believes is the team's most valuable player so far this season.
Price seemingly has come into games in difficult spots in each of his team-high eight appearances this season. Yet, he has worked through the difficulty of those situations well and leads the team with a 1.46 ERA in 12 1/3 innings. Sunday he picked up the win after pitching 3 1/3 innings and giving up just one hit and one run to go with four strikeouts in his longest outing of the season.
"I don't know what the win-loss is when he's in the game, I just know the leverage of the situations and his reliability to execute and come through has put us on the right side of things," Johnson said of his senior right-hander who entered the game with two runners on base and UA up by one run. "I really just felt in the fifth inning that we needed to go to him to kind of stem the tide right there. That if we could stop them right there that was gonna be the most critical point in the game.
"We had a lot of game left, but I felt like we were gonna score and I'm happy that it worked out that way."
Price struck out the first two batters he faced to get the team out of that jam before the Wildcats scored five runs to pull away in their half of the fifth inning.
Overall the Wildcats went through a similar scenario as the one they were in Sunday after losing two games early the season, and the last time it happened UA went on to reel off a 10-game winning streak.
There's certainly a confidence about the group as it has shown that it can work through adversity, and that is something positive the Wildcats can take away from their 2-2 split in games against Air Force and Wichita State over the weekend.
"I've seen some players on our team handle it in a very mature fashion this year," Johnson said about the inevitability of challenging stretches for a college baseball team at the Pac-12 level. "Sometimes that takes time and learning experience, and that was one of the things I wasn't sure about coming into the year to be honest with you just with losing last season. I'm very pleased with the maturity of the team.
"There's only a couple times where I feel like we've got out of character, and I don't think it's abnormal at this point in the year especially with the unique year that it is. I think all those experiences are gonna benefit us greatly, and really I'm really interested in moving forward. I feel good about the competition that we've played, I feel how we've been tested is gonna help us, I feel like we have a good road map of the things we need to do better and get ourselves prepared. So all of that is very, very valuable."
Arizona will now prepare to begin Pac-12 play this week as they leave Tucson and Hi Corbett Field to face UCLA (10-5) starting Friday night followed by a matchup against Loyola Marymount (7-7) next Monday afternoon.
WATCH: Jay Johnson's complete postgame press conference after Sunday's win
WATCH: Jacob Blas discuss his big day and Arizona's bounce-back performance
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