The weekend started early with a couple of marquee matchups coming on Thursday night, instead of the usual Friday lidlifters. And I figured the game I went to tonight would be THE pitching matchup of the weekend.

Addison Reed was a blur to the Kentucky batters tonight.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be much ado about nothing.

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WHAT I SAW AT TONY GWYNN STADIUM TONIGHT.
A completely different looking San Diego State team took the field tonight, disposing of No. 27 Kentucky in short order and throwing a huge pail of water on what was expected to be a hot pitching matchup.

Kentucky – 020 000 002 – 4 9 1
S.D.S.U. – 221 020 32x – 12 11 0

Alex Meyer was in trouble early tonight.

WP: Addison Reed (2-1)
LP: Alex Meyer (2-1)
Save: none

I was really looking forward to this one. Meyer vs. Reed? That’s a no-brainer, man. Bring – it – on. However…

The vaunted matchup of All American candidates on the mound didn’t really amount to much after all. Addison Reed out-dueled Alex Meyer on a cool Thursday night on Montezuma Mesa, though Meyer struggled uncharacteristically and both pitchers were out of the game by the end of the 6th inning.

I will say this, dangerous though he may be, Meyer sure as hell threw some hard pitches. He was approaching the mid-90s on his fastball during most of his stint. The problem was, he wasn’t always accurate and he was touched up for a run or two in all but one of the five innings he was a part of.

The Aztecs figured him out early and often enough to race out to a 6-2 lead after 4.1 innings, sending Meyer to an early shower. The Aztecs didn’t look back from there, motoring their way to a 12-4 win at Tony Gwynn Stadium tonight.

“We needed this.” Coach Gwynn said afterward. “This was big.”

Brandon Meredith had four RBI in his first two at-bats.

He was referring to his team’s 0-4 start, that has now turned into four wins in their last six games. And those wins are pretty impressive, coming against UC Riverside, two against San Diego and then tonight’s win over the No. 27 team in the country. So now, the once-shaky Aztecs confidently improve to 4-6. UK drops its first game of the season now standing at 7-1.

The big basher turned out to be Brandon Meredith, who in the first two innings of the game hit a screaming home run to left and a slicing double to right, scoring a pair of runs each time. That seemed to instill confidence into the Aztec batting order as they ended up getting eight hits off of Meyer and working him for four walks as well. Meyer also hit a pair of batters.

“I told my team, it all starts on the mound.” UK coach Gary Henderson told me afterward. “When you walk seven and hit two it makes things really hard. It’s simple as that.”

When I asked him if he thought Alex Meyer was just a little bit keyed up and over-throwing. He responded like a father giving a teaching lesson. “I think that’s a pretty accurate assessment right there.” He said, looking straight into my eyes.

“Physically, he was fine. I mean, he struck out the first guy of the night on three pitches. He’s still a young guy. He’s gotta learn how to pitch and how to keep his emotions under control when we go on the road.”

And in a vast difference from the first time I saw SDSU two weeks ago in a Sunday loss to Oklahoma, this edition seemed to have a confidence about them and stayed on top of the ball at the plate all night long. The defense was pretty stout as well, not committing a single error in 10 chances through the first six innings, even pulling off a pair of double plays in the process.

And sure, a lot of that might’ve had to do with having Addison Reed on the mound. The All American closer-turned-first-game-of-the-weeend-starter was good, but not spectacular, going 6.0 innings, striking out six and giving up just five hits to get his second win of the season.

Ryan Wynveen took the mound in the 7th to close things out and gave up a pair of runs in the 9th. That prompted pitching coach Eric Valenzuela to insert John Pecoraro, who recorded the final two outs.

The Cats sent in reliever Kyle Jackson to replace Meyer in the bottom of the 5th, and helped retire the side. But in the 7th, the Black and Red made things academic, as Jackson issued a pair of walks and San Diego State’s Matt Parker was parking a three-run rocket over the left field wall, increasing their lead to an insurmountable 10-2 advantage.

As a former Aztec himself, this obviously wasn’t the homecoming Wildcat head coach had in mind. “To play in a different environment against a good club, clearly we didn’t respond the way we were hoping we would.” He said afterward. “But it’s just one game. We know we can play better, and we will. I like the maturity of my team. We’ll rebound.”

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A COUPLE OF NOTES.

- Talking to coach Henderson after the game tonight he told me three key points:

1- On his teams’ motivation to make amends for last season.
“Despite what you saw here tonight, this team is still very motivated. I think we’re going to be pretty good, to be honest. We’ve got a pretty good club… though it’d be pretty hard to win an argument for that tonight.”

2- On his teams maturity in light of a tumultuous pre-season.
“I absolutely LOVE the maturity on this team, particularly in the position players. We’ve got a lot of experience. We’ve also got a lot of young pitchers that we’re going to be able to rely on. And everybody has handled the off-field distractions just fine.”

3- On the early season and the slightly tougher schedule his team is playing.
“We’ve played some good teams. That Coastal Carolina is a really good club and we beat them 3-2. We just wanted to come out here and play a few games against some really good teams, knowing the weather was probably going to be pretty good. We wanted to see where out team stood.”

- Alex Meyer was definitely amped to get going tonight, even going so far as to throw just six warm-up pitches before turning to home plate umpire Dan Perugini and saying, “I’m good.” Perugini turned and said, “You get two more.” Meyer shook him off and threw his last warm-up before catcher Marcus Nidiffer tossed to second base, finishing the warmups.

- Meyer was frustrated most of the night, even walking off into the dugout after the second inning and yelling an F-bomb into his glove before throwing it against the dugout wall.

- One of the players I was looking forward to seeing tonight was UK’s dual-threat Braden Kapteyn, who is 1-0 with a save on the mound already. But he came into tonight’s game with just one hit in 19 at-bats. Despite playing in every game this season, Kapteyn didn’t start tonight’s game, but he did come into the game in the late innings and got a near home run in 9th, smashing a double off the wall.

- In the Blink 182 song “Josie” the lyrics refer to a Mexican restaurant favorite of theirs called “Sombrero’s.” I was able to stop by one of the fast food joints before the game and I have to say, it wasn’t too shabby. For (semi) fast food, it sure as hell wasn’t Taco Bell or other lower-quality fare like that. I got a chicken taco and a chicken enchilada dinner plate. It was really fresh, white meat chicken and good beans and rice. But I don’t think it was anything over-the-top great. It was probably really, really awesome food at 2:30am when the bars close… which of course, may just be the kind of food Blink 182 wants after one of their gigs.

(“She brings me food from Sombrero’s just because” – Blink 182)

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NO MORE “BAT CATS”?!
I have been using the phrase “bat cats” when talking about Kentucky in the past – mainly because a good bud of mine is from Kentucky and a huge Big Blue fan and refers to the baseball team with that moniker. But in the pre-game notes, it says very plainly, “No ‘Bat Cats’ please. Please refrain from refering to the UK baseball team as the ‘Bat Cats’… Feel free to use University of Kentucky, Kentucky, UK, Wildcats or Cats.”

Sorry about that Big Blue fans.

Wait, is “Big Blue” okay? It didn’t say.

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THE HALL OF FAME OF AWKWARD SITUATIONS.
About a half hour after the game, when the stadium was empty, I decided I had better hit the latrine one last time before the 2-hour drive back to Los Angeles. Sure as shootin’ I walk into the bathroom and there’s Tony Gwynn, turning away from the urinal and zipping up. “Ummm… this is weird.” I say to myself.

After a few awkward seconds….

“That was a good game for you guys coach.” I finally say.

He says, “Yep. It was solid.”

…

… then i hit the pisser and he hit the sanitary soap, and not another word was spoken.

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Okay, that’s it for now.

Just to give you guys a head’s up, I’m going to be spending some time interviewing Nebraska head coach Mike Anderson on Friday morning as the Huskers are out here to take on UCLA. I’m doing some questions for Easton that they will use for their website. I’ll also be doing some one-on-one questions of my own for him, similar to what I did at the two California Media Days. They are telling me I may be able to upload the interview for the CollegeBaseballToday site. We’ll see.

I’ve got a big pre-Oscar party to help put on Friday night, so I probably won’t be doing anything for a Friday update – yes, I know, I won’t be at the Rice-Texas matchup like I was hoping. But I’m sure you guys understand me taking one night off.

G’night.