With season barely past half way, Bulldogs in WCC driver”s seat
There is still nearly half the season to go, but the Gonzaga Bulldogs last weekend put themselves on the pole to win the West Coast Conference baseball race.
The Bulldogs’ series win over Pepperdine meant more than usual. It meant:
• GU holds the tiebreaker over the University of San Francisco and the Waves, the two teams running 1-2 in the West Division. The Zags took two of three games from the Dons in Spokane earlier this month. USF has a game and a half lead on Pepperdine after sweeping Loyola Marymount during the weekend.
• With the University of San Diego losing two of three at Portland, GU opened a three-game edge over the Toreros in the Coast Division. More importantly, the Zags have a five-game lead in the loss column (USD is 11-10 in WCC play, GU 12-5) and San Diego only has nine league games left. This weekend the Toreros host USF.
• The Zags have only one home series remaining, but that’s against USD, which they defeated twice in San Diego. Before that, GU travels to Santa Clara this weekend to open the Broncos’ new $8.6 million Stephen Schott Baseball Stadium. After hosting USD, GU finishes on the road at Saint Mary’s and Loyola, where the Bulldogs may have to make up a game rained out in Spokane if it has a bearing on the final standings.
If GU is 7-6 the rest of the way, including defeating USD once, the Toreros would have to win the remainder of their games to earn a tie with the Bulldogs.
The Zags last played for the WCC title in 2001, when they lost at Pepperdine. They last won the conference’s crown in … that would be never. The last time GU won a conference title and appeared in the NCAA Division I baseball tournament was 1981, when Steve Hertz’s team won a school-record 48 games and the NorPac title.
In the 24 years since, the 2001 Coast Division crown is the only championship on the Zags’ resume.
All of which is unimportant to the Zags right now.
“Coach (Mark Machtolf) tells us before each game that, in a 30-game conference season, every game is important,” junior first baseman Bobby Carlson said after Sunday’s 6-5 win over Pepperdine.
“There is still a long way to go,” said Jeff Culpepper, senior center fielder. “We still have a lot of work to do.”
Around the area
Washington State’s hard-luck Pac-10 season continued in Corvallis last weekend, where the Cougars failed to hold leads in two of the three games against Oregon State, ranked as high as sixth this week. The three losses dropped WSU to 0-12 in conference, but that only leaves them four games behind this weekend’s conference visitor, the University of Washington. The Huskies were also swept during the weekend, at home by Stanford, which moved up as high as 18th this week. … In the Cougs’ opener against OSU, WSU jumped to a 3-0 lead in the top of the first, but the Beavers showed why they are ranked as high as they’ve been in the past four decades by rallying twice, including a run in the bottom of the ninth to win 5-4. After a rainout Saturday, OSU breezed in Sunday’s first game behind the one-hit pitching of Anton Maxwell. WSU catcher Brady Everett had the lone hit, then added three more in a nightcap the Cougs led 6-4 going into the eighth. But OSU scored three times to earn the sweep. … Washington will bring one of the Pac-10’s best starters, sophomore Tim Linecum, to Pullman, but even Linecum, last year’s Pac-10 Pitcher of the Year and Freshman of the Year, has had trouble winning. The 6-foot right- hander is 6-5, 1-3 in Pac-10 play, including a 2-1 loss in a pitcher’s duel with Stanford’s Jeff Gilmore last Friday. … Despite Linecum’s 3.34 earned run average in the Pac-10, the Huskies’ team ERA is 4.67. That’s bad enough, but not as inflated as the Cougars’. WSU’s Pac-10 ERA: 8.52. Left-hander Travis Webb, from Lewis and Clark High, has the best conference ERA on the staff (5.23) after suffering two tough-luck losses against the Beavers. Webb threw three shutout innings in the opener before leaving in the bottom of the ninth with two outs and a runner on third. In the final game, Webb relieved with one on and no one out, hit a batter, then yielded an infield single before being pulled. Both runners scored on a double, handing the sophomore the loss.
Whitworth is assured of a fourth- place finish in the Northwest Conference. But the Pirates control whether they finish in a tie with Willamette, or have the spot all to themselves. The Bearcats, who finish NWC play today against last-place Lewis & Clark, should finish 13-11. Whitworth, at 13-8, has a much tougher task this weekend, with three games at Pacific Lutheran, tied for second with 11th-ranked Linfield, a game behind No. 18 George Fox. No matter what, the Pirates will have their best NWC finish since 2002, when they were 16-8 in league, a half-game from the top spot. The Whits clinched fourth with last weekend’s home sweep of Puget Sound, highlighted by Cody Person’s complete-game five-hitter in Saturday’s second game. Person (4-1) had to be near perfect because UPS’ Taylor Thompson was for 52/3 innings. But that’s when the Bucs struck for four runs despite a 45-minute lightning delay. The Pirates attacked earlier Sunday, scoring six runs in the second, three more in the third (on Jason Martin’s three-run home run) and another two in the sixth (including Nick Froman’s solo homer).
Community Colleges of Spokane put a crimp in its plans to win the NWAACC East Division title with a 1-3 record – all on the road – last week. The Sasquatch dropped from first to third, jumped by Treasure Valley and Columbia Basin. The good news for CCS, however, is it has eight of its final 12 games at home, including a big doubleheader Wednesday against CBC. That’s followed by a Saturday doubleheader at fourth-place Big Bend. Another piece of good news for the Sasquatch: If they are in the race going into the final week, they finish with second-to-last Walla Walla and last-place Yakima Valley.