PORTLAND, Ore. — The fireworks were popping Thursday night at Joe Etzel Field, with the Santa Clara University baseball team and host Portland combining for eight home runs in their West Coast Conference series opener.
 
But it was the Pilots who had the brightest firework of the night, as Jonas Salk led off the bottom of the 11th with a walk-off solo home run to give Portland a 10-9 extra-innings win in game one.
 
HOW IT HAPPENED

• Salk hit the very first pitch thrown to him in the 11th to end a game that had gone on for more than three hours. It was his second home run of the game after also hitting a game-tying solo shot in the second inning to make it 1-1 at the time.
   
• Portland (19-23, 10-6 WCC) also got a two-run home run in the fifth inning from Zach Toglia to give themselves a 5-1 lead at the time. Top-of-the-order batter Tyler Howard hit his own two-run homer in the eighth to tie the game at 9-9, erasing what had been a 9-5 Santa Clara lead.
   
• The Broncos (17-24, 5-11 WCC) exploded for eight runs in the sixth inning, highlighted by three home runs – all for multiple runs – as they came back to erase their 23rd deficit of the season. Tate Medicoff hit the first home run of his career, a three-run bomb over the left-field wall to make it a one-run game at 5-4. Four batters later, Thomas Ferroggiaro also hit the first long ball of his three-year career, launching a go-ahead, three-run shot to make it 7-5.
   
• Dylan Joyce capped the eight-run rally with his 10th home run of the season, a two-run blast that made it 9-5. Six of the first seven Broncos batters of the inning reached safely, and 11 batters went to the plate in the inning. Joyce was 2 for 2 in the inning, scoring twice with a single and the two-run home run.
   
• Max Bayles was only one strikeout shy of his season and career-high total with 11 Ks in five innings pitched. Brandon Gomez (3-6) tied a career high with nine strikeouts of his own in 4 2/3 innings of work. Santa Clara struck out 20 Pilots in 11 innings – the program's most in a single game in at least the last 15 years.
   
• The Broncos jumped ahead in the first inning, 1-0, on a one-out solo home run from Mateo Garcia, his third long ball of the year. Portland slowly worked its way back to go ahead 5-1 after Salk's game-tying shot in the second, a two-run single by ninth-batter Cody Nitowitz in the fourth, and Howard's two-run shot in the fifth.
   
• Joyce (2 for 5), Ferroggiaro (2 for 6) and Ben Cleary (2 for 6) all had multi-hit games for Santa Clara. Howard (3 for 5), Salk (3 for 6), Toglia (2 for 5) and Coleman Hollabaugh (2 for 4) posted multi-hit performances for Portland.

NOTABLE NUMBERS

• 0: Santa Clara's defense didn't commit an error Thursday for the second consecutive game. It was the team's fifth straight game with one or fewer errors and ninth in their last 10.
• 4: The Broncos' four home runs in the game marked a season high, and were their most since also hitting four last season versus Pepperdine on April 14, 2024.
• 6: All of the Broncos' last six losses have all come by one run (since April 15). They started the season 3-0 in one-run games, but have lost eight of their last nine such contests.

COMING UP

• Game two of the series is set for 6 p.m. on Friday. The series finale will have a first pitch time of noon. Fans can find all live coverage links on SantaClaraBroncos.com.