Santa Clara University

SPOKANE, Wash. — Everyone got in on the action Sunday.
 
The Santa Clara University baseball team had one of its best offensive performances in years and the pitching shut down one of the conference's top offenses on its home field, as the Broncos dominated Gonzaga, 12-4, to clinch a West Coast Conference series victory at Patterson Baseball Complex for the first time in 16 years.
 
HOW IT HAPPENED

• Santa Clara (18-28, 7-14 WCC) never trailed Sunday, throwing up crooked numbers in the first and second innings to lead 5-0 right out the gate. The Broncos tallied 19 base hits – their most in a game in more than six years, since collecting 22 versus San Jose State on Feb. 16, 2020. Every single player in the lineup had at least one hit, seven of them scored at least one run and six of them had at least one RBI.
   
• Will Anderson hit an opposite-field, bases-loaded double in the second to bring three runs home and make it 5-0. Ben Cleary, who logged the first four-hit game of his career by going 4 for 5, singled in a run in the fourth and the Broncos led 6-0 without blinking.
   
• Gonzaga (28-17, 16-5 WCC) finally started getting to Santa Clara starter Tyler Alleman in the bottom of the fourth thanks to Ryder Young's first-pitch, two-run homer. Alleman threw the longest outing of his career Sunday, going 4 2/3 innings with three strikeouts, but he wouldn't make it out of the fifth after the Bulldogs built a two-out rally against him.
   
• Cooper Lanz (2-4) entered and surrendered two run-scoring hits as Gonzaga pulled to within 6-4, but after that he shut down the Bulldogs down for four innings. Lanz retired eight in a row from the fifth to the eighth and faced the minimum through the final four innings of the game. He did not allow an earned run (only the two inherited runners in the fifth) while retiring 12 of the final 13 batters he faced with two strikeouts. Lanz did all that while shutting down a Gonzaga offense that entered the weekend leading the conference in home runs (52) and was second in batting average (.304), runs scored (308) and slugging percentage (.483).
   
• The Broncos' offense kept building its lead through the late innings, including a two-run single in the sixth from Luke Devine, another RBI single from Cleary in the seventh, and three more runs in the ninth. Waylon Walsh led off the ninth with a 445-foot monster home run, the fourth of his freshman campaign. Mateo Garcia singled home Payton Lambert, who had followed Walsh's homer with a double, and a third run scored on a double play ground ball, making it 12-4.
   
• Gonzaga's Finbar O'Brien (3-2) took the loss after allowing five runs on seven hits in only two innings pitched. Joe Thornton and Erik Hoffberg also gave up three earned runs each in relief. Mikey Bell led the Bulldogs' offense with a 3-for-4 day at the plate with an RBI and a run scored.

NOTABLE NUMBERS

• 6: Santa Clara had six multi-hit performances Sunday, its most in a game since also having six in a 13-6 win over Stanford on May 6, 2025.
• 16: The Broncos won a series over Gonzaga in Spokane, Wash., for the first time in 16 years Sunday. The last Santa Clara series win at Patterson Baseball Complex was a three-game sweep of the Bulldogs on April 30-May 2, 2010
• 23: The Broncos' defense logged its 23rd errorless game of the year Sunday and second of the weekend. The Broncos have only committed three errors over their last nine games, and no more than one per game.

COMING UP

• Santa Clara hosts Cal Poly for a non-conference midweek matchup at 4 p.m. Tuesday. Fans can purchase tickets and find all live coverage links on SantaClaraBroncos.com.