By Aaron Johnson (@voz_aaron1)- Senior Staff Writer
Ethan Ross finishing his windup on March 9, 2024 where he tied his career high in strikeouts with nine I Photo by Christian Vieyra | The Spear
San Jose State baseball (6-7, 2-2) defeated Air Force (4-9, 0-1) 10-2 thanks to a phenomenal pitching performance from redshirt senior Ethan Ross.
Ross threw seven innings of shoutout baseball and tied his career-high nine strikeouts. The performance comes after Ross has opened up the season 0-3 and came into Friday’s game with an ERA north of 11.
“I’m just really proud of him,” head coach Brad Sanfilippo said. “To see him bounce back tonight shows unbelievable maturity and toughness.”
Ross only surrendered six hits during his time on mound and was constantly working out of trouble.
“I was just trying to get my hitters back in their groove, back into the dugout as quick as possible by pounding zone,” Ross said. “It worked out pretty well.”
Everything was clicking for the Spartans as the offense was able to put up 10 runs on the board.
“We just got leadoff runners on and we found a way to continue manufacture runs and continue to score,” Sanfilippo said. “I thought we were super consistent and super relentless.”
Senior shortstop Theo Hardy had the highlight plays on the night including a two RBI double in the bottom of the fourth inning and a sliding stop and throw on defense.
“(The batter) smoked it,” Hardy said. “Hunter made an unbelieve play on the backend to pick me up, that play doesn’t get made without Hunter.”
Redshirt senior Dalton Bowling also showed off his power on his 2-5 night hitting two doubles and totaling two RBI’s.
This victory was the first time San Jose State played Air Force since the Mountain West Championship last year and these teams have gotten very familiar with each other over the past seasons as a rivalry has built up between the two schools.
“There is obviously some history here,” Sanfilippo said. “We respect their program, it’s too early in conference to determine anything, we’re just trying to play good baseball.”
SJSU will play game two of the three-game series on 2:05 p.m. Saturday at Excite Ballpark.
