Photo by Kevin Snyder/Maryland Terrapins. Photo courtesy of Maryland Athletics.
Maryland baseball put together its most complete game of the season for its first ranked win since 2025.
Maryland handed No. 12 USC its third loss of the season Saturday, beating the Trojans 6-4 at Bob “Turtle” Smith Stadium on Saturday. The win snapped a six-game losing streak for the Terps.
The game started to go the Terps’ way in the fifth inning. Down 2-1, freshman Ty Kaunas hit a two-run home run that just cleared the left field wall, giving Maryland its first lead of the series. The home run marked Kaunas’ first this season.
Maryland extended its lead in the seventh inning. After the Trojans tied the game in the top half of the frame, sophomore Jackson Sirois hit a towering home run over the batter’s eye in center field to give the lead back to the Terps.
“I was just trying to win another pitch,” Sirois said. “[I] had two strikes, and I got a good pitch and hit it.”
Two batters later, Brayden Martin hit a home run over the right field wall to give Maryland a 6-3 advantage.
“I thought what we did a good job of was carrying over the momentum that we had from the rest of the game yesterday,” head coach Matt Swope said. “That [was] just a solid baseball win, something we needed desperately on this team right now.”
Defensively, Maryland was much better. Evan Smith had struggled in prior starts, issuing at least seven hits in each of his past three starts. But Saturday’s performance was much improved as the redshirt sophomore surrendered just two earned runs on three hits.
Smith featured solid control in his fifth outing, throwing 60 of his 103 pitches for strikes across a season-high five innings of work. The right-hander secured most of his outs by inducing weak contact and generating a plethora of groundballs.
Swope said Smith, who is one year removed from Tommy John surgery, is well out of the injury recovery period.
“We’re pretty much there,” Swope said. “I think we reached that point about a week and a half ago, two weeks ago maybe. Hopefully we’ll see a steady dose of more of these quality starts, because it’ll help us get some wins.”
Controversy arose in the seventh inning, when the Maryland dugout became vocal about the strike zone apparently shrinking during reliever Cristofer Cespedes’ second inning of work. Twice, Swope took steps out of the Terps dugout to speak to the home plate umpire.
But Maryland’s bullpen was unaffected and carried its strong performance from Friday into Saturday’s contest. The Terps used just two relievers as the combination of Cespedes and Logan Hastings allowed just two combined runs over the final four innings, allowing Maryland to notch a 6-4 win.
The win evens the series between Maryland and USC and sets up a rubber match on Sunday at 1 p.m.
