San Diego will provide Gonzaga with real challenge
The Gonzaga Bulldogs will take their first West Coast Conference road trip this weekend, traveling to the University of San Diego for three games starting Friday afternoon.
But as Gonzaga coach Mark Machtolf sees it, the Zags already had one road series. Or at least it felt like it.
“Actually, I think it almost worked opposite for us,” Machtolf said of the Zags’ WCC-opening series against Saint Mary’s two weekends ago. “This weekend it felt like a home series. But when we went against Saint Mary’s we had had maybe one or two practices (at Avista Stadium). I would have preferred to actually have been on the road to open league, then have some practices to make this more of a home park.”
When GU takes the road for real, the Bulldogs will run into a San Diego team whose record is a little misleading. The Toreros are 18-15-1 overall and 4-5 in the WCC’s Coast Division, a division the Zags, with a 3-2 mark, are tied atop along with Loyola Marymount.
But USD sports three starting pitchers who have earned run averages under 3.00. And they have something else.
“All their young kids are outstanding,” Machtolf said of the Toreros, “and two of the three are left-handed. They are going to be a very difficult matchup for us. We haven’t swung the bat great against left-handed pitching this year, but I think we’re capable. We just haven’t seen many.”
The two lefties are sophomore Nate Boman (5-1, 2.28 ERA) and junior Justin Blaine (5-3, 2.60). They team with sophomore right-hander Josh Butler (4-4, 2.88) to give USD one of the WCC’s best rotations.
And, like their Gonzaga counterparts, they throw to one of the conference’s best catchers.
Sophomore Jordan Abruzzo is coming off a freshman year in which he hit .375, the WCC’s second-best average. This year he’s hitting almost 100 points lower (.282), but he does have seven home runs and 25 RBIs.
The Zags, of course, have the WCC’s best catcher in Kyle Thibault, who was the league Player of the Year last season when he hit .424 to lead the league. This year Thibault, after a slow start, has raised his average to .319 with two home runs and 17 RBIs.
“Catching is so important in a series anyway,” Machtolf said of the two preseason All-Americans, “then you add in the fact that both of those catchers hit in the three hole for each offense, so the importance is just magnified.”
The Zags did win both games with Loyola last weekend. The third game was rained out Saturday and, if needed, will be made up in Los Angeles as part of GU’s season-ending series.
GU junior left-hander Patrick Donovan earned WCC co-pitcher of the week honors for his complete-game, four-hit, seven-strikeout shutout of the Lions on Friday.
Around the area
Things don’t get any easier for the Washington State Cougars this week. Though the Cougs have five home games, including hosting Gonzaga in a non-conference game tonight at 6, the final three this weekend are about as tough as possible. The Stanford Cardinal visit, sporting a 13-8 record, a top-10 ranking (as of last week) and the label as one of the favorites in the Pac-10. The Cardinal’s record is a little misleading because it includes five losses at either top-ranked and defending national champion Cal State Fullerton or fourth-ranked and national runner-up Texas. Stanford is led by John Mayberry Jr., son of the former major leaguer and a one-time top draft pick of the Mariners. Mayberry, a 6-foot-5 junior, was a preseason All-American at first base and is hitting .333 with four home runs and 22 runs batted in. Junior second baseman Jed Lowrie leads Stanford with eight home runs and 30 RBIs while hitting .310. The Cougs are coming off last weekend’s Pac-10 opening sweep at California, where James Freeman and Wayne Daman Jr. both suffered their first losses of the year –and saw their ERAs jump over 3.00. The weekend’s bright spot for the Cougs was the hitting of freshman Jim Murphy, who went 3-for-5 Saturday (with two RBIs) to lift his average to a team-leading .371.
Whitworth won three of four non-conference games in California during the weekend to raise its record to 8-9. Senior left-hander Dan Lundeberg posted a complete-game seven-hitter in a 4-1, seven-inning win over Vanguard University to open the trip. Senior Ben McCracken and junior Cody Person each threw five-hit complete games Friday, but McCracken’s was in a 3-2 loss to Division III power Cal State Hayward. Person’s came in a 2-0 win over Eastern Connecticut State. The Pirates host Central Washington in a doubleheader today before traveling to Whitman for three Northwest Conference games this weekend. The Missionaries are saddled with the NWC’s worst overall record at 3-15 along with a 1-11 league mark. Whitworth is 3-6 in conference.
Community Colleges of Spokane will take a 9-2 record into NWAACC play this week. The Sasquatch open conference play Wednesday at Columbia Basin (12-2 NWAACC) before hosting Wenatchee Valley (2-8) on Saturday. Both doubleheaders begin at noon.