Gonzaga pitchers overtaxed

Gonzaga University continues its brutal April baseball schedule this weekend when it travels to Moraga, Calif., to take on West Coast Conference rival Saint Mary’s in a three-game series that kicks off at 3 p.m. Friday at Louis Guisto Field.

Following Sunday’s finale, the Bulldogs (23-17, 5-6 WCC) return home to entertain defending two-time national champion Oregon State in a pair of non-conference games Tuesday and Wednesday, capping a hectic 27-day stretch in which they will have played 18 games – including five in a five-day span.

It helps that 12 of those games will have been played at home, and that Wednesday night’s scheduled non-conference matchup against NAIA power Lewis-Clark State was postponed until May 12 because of inclement weather.

But the Zags’ major league-like April schedule has still taxed coach Mark Machtolf’s pitching staff to its limit.

“Guys are getting a chance to pitch who might normally not pitch, I guess is the nicest way to say it,” Machtolf said Wednesday afternoon. “You find out a lot about a lot of different guys, that’s for sure. But the negative part of that is that it might cost you a game here or there.

“It’s tough on everybody.”

This season, Machtolf has trotted out 12 players to the mound, including three freshmen and junior Brandon Blank, who was used exclusively as an outfielder during his first two years at GU. That’s two more pitchers than he used last season.

GU’s staff earned run average of 6.05 is more than a run higher than last year’s, and opponents are batting more than 10 percentage points higher than they did in 2007.

The crush of games is the result of the NCAA’s decision to shorten the season to help level the playing field between warm and cold climate schools.

“We’d still be playing the same number of games under the old schedule,” Machtolf said, “but they would be more spread out, and we’d only be playing one non-conference game a week instead of two.

“It’s not an ideal situation, but you have to deal with it.”

Heading into this weekend’s series against Saint Mary’s (20-16-1, 4-8), the Zags find themselves in fifth place in the WCC standings.

But with nine WCC games remaining, they still have a chance to earn one of the two spots in the WCC Championship series that will determine the league’s automatic berth in the NCAA playoffs.

“It’s going to be a dogfight the rest of the way,” Machtolf said. “The league is really good and everybody is capable. We just need to go on the road and win some games and we’ll be OK.”

Cougs get needed win

In desperate need of a victory, Washington State finally found a way in Tuesday’s 9-8 non-conference win over Gonzaga at Bailey-Brayton Field.

The Cougars (20-18, 3-9 Pac-10 Conference), trailing 8-6 heading into the bottom of the ninth inning, got a two-run double from Shea Vucinich and a two-out game-winning single from Travis Coulter to put away the Bulldogs. The victory snapped a four-game losing streak that included three road losses – by a total of four runs – to Pac-10 rival and then 22nd-ranked Arizona in Tucson last weekend.

“We haven’t had many breaks lately and our guys could have quit,” WSU coach Donnie Marbut said after the win over the Zags. “It was a good way for us to break our losing streak after the close games we’ve had.”

Pirates finish season

Whitworth University closes out its NCAA Division III season this weekend with a pair of Northwest Conference doubleheaders against last-place Whitman College in Walla Walla.

The Pirates (11-25, 10-18) have lost 10 straight and are coming off a back-to-back non-conference losses to Lewis-Clark State, in which they were outscored 19-0. But the Bucs’ recent struggles pale in comparison to those of Whitman (2-34, 0-28), which has lost 33 straight games, including all 28 it has played against NWC opposition.

The Missionaries haven’t won since Feb. 10, when they edged Occidental 11-10. Since then they have been outscored 317-85, or an average of 7.2 runs per game.

Quick pitches

With last weekend’s sweep of Saint Mary’s and a 4-2 non-conference win over No. 25 Long Beach State on Tuesday, WCC leader and ninth-ranked San Diego ran its winning streak to a school-record 13 games. Junior Ricardo Pecina picked up the win for the Toreros and struck out a career-high 11 batters. … Brandon Harmon’s brief relief stint in Tuesday’s 9-8 non-conference loss to Washington State tied him with Matt Siwek (1996-2000) for the top spot on Gonzaga’s career appearances list with 81. … The Pac-10 has four teams – No. 4 Arizona State, No. 15 California, No. 16 Stanford and No. 24 Arizona – ranked in this week’s ESPN Coaches Top 25. … Arizona, with its two wins over New Mexico and three over Washington State last week, extended its season-best winning streak to 10 games.