WOU Baseball: Western Oregon Clinches Eighth-Straight GNAC Title With Split

The Western Oregon baseball team will travel to Lacey, Wash., for a doubleheader Apr. 28 at 1:00 p.m.

Salem-News.com Sports

MONMOUTH, Ore. - Western Oregon split its doubleheader with Northwest Nazarene Saturday (Apr. 25) as it lost game one 6-3 before bouncing back to take game two 12-5.

With the split and a loss by Montana State Billings, Western Oregon captured its eighth-straight Great Northwest Athletic Conference title and its ninth straight conference title overall. The Wolves are now 29-11 this season and 18-3 in the GNAC. The split pushed the Crusaders to 13-26 on the season and to 6-18 in the GNAC.

Thomas McCarthy and Justin Speer led the Wolves offensively in the doubleheader as each collected four hits in seven at-bats.

Game 1

NNU scored three runs in the top of the eighth inning to break a 3-3 tie and go on to the 6-3 victory.

In the eighth, Conner Rankin delivered the go-ahead run with a single down the left field line to plate Jon Keller from second. The Crusaders would get two more runs in the inning, one on a bases loaded hit-by-pitch and a sacrifice fly, to take the 6-3 lead.

Kalen Hruza would take over on the hill for NNU in the bottom of the eighth and pitch the final two innings to earn his first save of the season.

In the game, Western Oregon left 11 runners on base and was outhit 12 to 11. Justin Speer was 3-for-4 with a run scored and an RBI while Travis Fox was the only other Wolf to record a multiple hit game, as he went 2-for-4.

Jacob Pettit suffered his second loss of the season for WOU as he pitched seven innings allowing nine hits and five runs while walking one and striking out three.

"We let them hang around and with that team speed they have it is going to come back to bite you," said Western Oregon head coach Jeremiah Robbins.

Game 2

Kirk Lind (6-1) took a perfect game into the seventh inning as he retired the first 19 hitters he faced, 11 of them via the strikeout, to lead Western Oregon to a 12-5 win in game two.

The top five hitters in the Wolves' order all had at least one RBI. Thomas McCarthy led the way going 3-for-3 with four RBI while shortstop JJ Mascolo was 3-for-4 with three runs scored out of the nine hole. Western Oregon hitters also had three homers in the game. McCarthy's two-run homer in the first inning gave WOU the early lead and Justin Speer and Drew Humphrey went back-to-back in the sixth to cap off the scoring for the Wolves.

Even after McCarthy's home run gave WOU the early lead, Western Oregon continued to put runs on the board scoring four in the second, two in the fourth, one in the fifth and three in the sixth.

Lind retired the first batter of the seventh inning on a strikeout, before Sean McDonald grounded a ball up the middle under the glove of outstretched second baseman Eric Renander for NNU's first hit of the game to break up Lind's quest for perfection.

"You can't ask for much more than for a guy to be perfect through 6.1 against aluminum bats," noted Robbins. "To have that effort to clinch the GNAC title was phenomenal."

Next game

The Western Oregon baseball team will travel to Lacey, Wash., for a doubleheader Apr. 28 at 1:00 p.m. The first game will be a makeup from a game postponed in Lacey on Mar. 15 while the second game was added to the schedule to give both teams an additional NCAA Division II game.

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