Wildcats finish regular season at Houston before Big 12 Tournament
With Arizona scuffling of late and its chances of hosting a regional all but gone, Sunday likely marked the final game at Hi Corbett Field not only for its seven seniors but for the majority of the batting order.
So naturally, a pair of underclassmen paved the way for their older brothers to go out on a high note.
Easton Breyfogle’s RBI single in the bottom of the 8th inning scored fellow sophomore Andrew Cain with the winning run in the Wildcats’ 8-7 victory over Utah, snapping a 4-game skid and avoiding a home sweep to the last place team in the Big 12.
Arizona (34-17, 16-11) finished the home slate 24-6, its best record at Hi Corbett since going 31-7 in 2021. The Wildcats had lost the previous three at home, getting outscored 34-17 in those games, but with the conditions ripe for scoring their offense had one of the most productive days of the season with 16 hits—most in a Big 12 games—and six players getting at least two.
“We haven’t played in really that kind of situation a lot,” UA coach Chip Hale said. “I think we just had to hang in there. Even the first two games, if we just could have hung in there in the middle innings with pitching we would have been okay. But I thought we hung in there, and we knew that we would score more than them at some point.”
Yet Arizona also left 15 men on base, including 10 in the first four innings when a 4-0 lead should have been much larger.
Smith Bailey was almost untouchable the first four innings, allowing one hit with five strikeouts. He had retired 11 in a row before Utah (20-26, 7-19) started to get to him, collecting three straight 2-out hits in the 5th to get within 4-3.
The freshman right-hander came back out for the 6th and retired the first two batters before Drake Digiornio homered to tie it.
“I thought Smith Bailey was probably the key to the game, getting us the length,” Hale said of Bailey, who went a career-high six innings and matches his career best with six strikouts and also didn’t walk a batter for the first time since early March.
Arizona would retake the lead in each of the next three innings, first going up 5-4 in the bottom of the 6th on a wild pitch. Utah evened it up in the top of the 7th, only to see the Wildcats score twice more in the bottom of the inning on a solo homer by Breyfogle and a 2-out double from Maddox Mihalakis, who was 4 for 4.
“This year obviously hasn’t been what I wanted it to be, but at this point, it’s just trying to put my team in the best position to win,” said Breyfogle, who came in hitting .205 overall and .161 in Big 12 play. “I’m going up there and with the right mindset … and just trying to get the job done for the team.”
Utah tied it again in the 8th, as Casey Hintz hit the first batter he faced before Digiornio hit his second homer. Tony Pluta came on and, after walking the first retired the next six to get his first win of the season and lower his ERA to 0.66 in Big 12 play.
Cain, who was 2 for 5 with two runs scored, began the bottom of the 8th with a double and with one out came home when Breyfogle singled up the middle.
The 9th saw Pluta get a pair of grounders before appearing to hit Tyler Quinn with a pinch. Hale challenged the call, though, and it was overturned after replay showed it hit the knob of the bat for a foul ball, and one pitch later defensive replacement TJ Adams caught a fly ball on the warning track in left field to end it.
Arizona improved to 9-1 in one-run games in 2025, its only loss a 2-1 defeat to Ole Miss to open the season.
“I think today is a game that can really give us some confidence, because we haven’t won a lot of one-run games that we have to out hit the other team and I think that we did that today,” said Brendan Summerhill, who was 3 for 5 with two RBI and is hitting .411. “I don’t necessarily think, like, everything’s been bad, just the result is bad. And as you know in this game you can’t go off the results. You got to keep fighting. There’s a lot of season left.”
Arizona will be on the road from here on out, starting next weekend at Houston (28-22, 11-15) to wrap up the regular season before bussing to Arlington, Texas for the Big 12 Tournament. The Wildcats are currently tied with Kansas State for fifth place, and finishing outside of the top four would mean opening in the first round rather than get a bye into the quarterfinals.
The UA won three of four games in Houston earlier this season, including wins over Texas A&M and Mississippi State at the Astros Foundation College Classic.
“We’re going to go after Houston, the three games are super important to us for seeding in our in our conference,” Hale said. “We’ve just got to play good baseball. I thought we played a lot better today.”