FULLERTON, Calif.—Clemson junior lefty and ACC Pitcher of the Year, Matthew Crownover, was pitching a gem after six innings, giving up just three hits and one run. But ASU spoiled an otherwise quality start with just two swings of the bat.
Just two innings after giving up a solo homer to Trever Allen, the only scar on a dominant performance to that point, Crownover gave up a leadoff walk to him in the seventh inning.
Then, Joey Bielek and Brian Serven went back-to-back with a two-run homer and a solo shot to turn a 2-1 deficit into a 4-2 lead.
ASU head coach Tracy Smith said it was ever-important to have the long ball in the team's arsenal.
"I don't think you're going to put together big innings off of (Crownover) by getting multiple hits," he said. "That's why power is so important is because you're never out of it — one big swing can get you back into it."
He also praised Crownover and said the Sun Devils were fortunate to win the game.
"I think we knew that we would have our hands full with one of the best pitchers in the country," Smith said. "Just a really, really good baseball game. (Clemson) is a good team and we're going to feel good about this one for about an hour, then start refocusing."
The explosive seventh inning propelled No. 2 seed ASU to a 7-4 victory over No. 3 seed Clemson in the first game of the Fullerton Regional at Cal State Fullerton's Goodwin Field.
Allen said there was not much of a velocity drop with Crownover, but noted that he was locating his pitches well.
"That's what kept us off balance a lot of the time, but we just stuck with our plan and got a few counts that were favorable in an offensive standpoint and took advantage of them," he said. "You have to hit the mistake pitches and I think we did that pretty well today."
Before the two seventh-inning blasts, Crownover had thrown seven straight balls. After the home runs, he found himself tagged with four earned runs on just five ASU hits.
"We had a good ballgame going," said Clemson head coach Jack Leggett. "I thought we got some big hits when we had to...we just lost a little bit of control in the seventh and eighth innings."
Crownover said he did not want to let Allen beat him once more after the senior right fielder hit a "pretty good pitch" out of the park.
"They're a good team all the way through the lineup, so you can't just focus on one guy," he said. "I made two bad pitches all day and they made me pay for it and that's what good teams do."
In the bigger picture, the inning kickstarted the ASU offense, which then tacked on three more runs in the eighth inning to break the game open and extend the lead to 7-2.
However, lost in all the madness was another solid start from ASU junior Ryan Kellogg, who has been the most consistent pitcher for the Sun Devils this season. On Friday, he gave up just two runs on six hits in seven innings, including getting the final out in a bases-loaded jam where the Tigers could have broken the game wide open with a hit.
"Just trying to grind through it and give the team a chance to win, and that's what I try to do every time I go out there," Kellogg said. "I have one day a week to get a job done. The big thing was trying to get through seven innings and keep us in the ballgame."
Smith said it was a typical Kellogg performance.
"You can pretty much pencil him in and say he is going to go seven," he said. "He's probably going to give up a couple hits, but he's going to give your team a chance to win every single time, and that's exactly what he did today."
Friday afternoon's win provided a great start in the regional and could work toward exercising some demons from its previous visit to the Fullerton Regional in 2013, where it lost twice to Cal State Fullerton and was unable to advance.
Ryan Burr picked up the save after replacing Darin Gilles, who pitched a strong eighth inning but gave up two runs in the ninth. Burr recorded the final out of the inning with runners on the corners and the tying run at the plate.
Reach the reporter at Justin.Toscano@asu.edu or on Twitter @justintoscano3
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