COMPTON – The Chico State baseball team had won 10 NCAA Championship Tournament West Regional openers in a row. Now, for the first time since 1996, the Wildcats will be forced to attempt to make their way through the losers’ bracket following an 11-4 loss to Cal State Dominguez Hills Thursday night.
The Wildcats took a 3-2 lead in the fourth on Kevin Seaver’s RBI-double and Adrian Bringas’ two-run double, but that was their lone bright spot of the night. Cal State Dominguez Hills scored three in the fifth to re-take the lead and four in the seventh to break the game open.
Chico State, which dipped to 35-19, will play Hawaii Pacific in an elimination game Friday at 2 p.m. The winner will advance to play Saturday at noon. The loser will head for home.
The Wildcats tried to re-create some of the magic they used to rally from 10 runs down to defeat Cal State San Bernardino in last weekend’s CCAA Championship Tournament. They scored a run on Jackson Evans’ RBI-single and then loaded the bases to finally dispatch of Cal State Dominguez Hills starter Kody Kurowski. But freshman Andrew Klausmeier got Bringas to ground out to short to end the threat.
They’ll have to rebound from Thursday night’s disappointment quickly against the Pacific West Conference champion Sea Warriors, who lost to UC San Diego 12-0 Thursday to fall to 37-11.
Cal State Dominguez Hills, which has now won five straight against Chico State after losing the first meeting between the teams this season, jumped to a 2-0 lead in the first. And they did it against the only Wildcat pitcher to beat them this season, Michael Gleason.
But Gleason settled in after that to retire 10 in a row and the Wildcats gave him a lead to work with. Evans doubled down the right field with one down in the fourth for Chico State’s first hit against Kurowski. Then, with two out, Seaver drilled a double to left-center, Adam Arakawa walked, and Bringas hit one to nearly the same spot to give the Wildcats a 3-2 lead.
They failed to finish off Kurowski, however, as the strong lefty got Deven Braden to fly out and then put up zeroes in the fifth, sixth, and seventh. He improved to 9-4 with the win.
Gleason allowed a season-high seven runs on eight hits in six frames to fall to 7-3.
BOX SCORE
Game 1: #1 UC San Diego 12, #4 Hawaii Pacific 0
The top-seeded Tritons of UC San Diego dealt the fourth-seeded Sea Warriors of Hawai'i Pacific University a 12-0 loss behind the pitching of UCSD starter Tim Shubuya who hurled an eight-inning, five hit shutout effort. Leading the bats was Kellen Lee, going 2-of-3 he brought in four runs for the Tritons while scoring once himself.
The Tritons, ranked No. 1 in the nation, improved to 49-7. Hawaii Pacific fell to 37-11.
GAME NOTES – In four career appearances against Chico State, Kurowski is 3-0 with a save…Baslow’s home run was the first allowed by Gleason in his last 38 innings…Seaver’s two doubles brought his season total to 26 and career total to 43. He ranks second in Chico State history in both…Arakawa walked twice to bring his career total to 68, the fourth most in Chico State history and most of any two-year player…Michael Murphy doubled and singled to bring his total base count to 127, the ninth most in Chico State single-season history…Braden’s hitting streak ended at nine games…Gleason’s three strikeouts brought his season total to 90, which matches Nick Bryant for the fifth most in school history…This is the fourth time ever the Wildcats have lost their regional opener. The first two times, in 1978 and 1987, they were eliminated the next day. In 1996, they won the following two games before bowing out of the tournament.
