THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. – The University of Redlands Baseball team (27-14) eliminated California Lutheran University (CLU) 5-3 on Wednesday afternoon in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC) Tournament First Round.
In the win-or-go-home situation, the Bulldogs put all the pressure on the Kingsmen early scoring three times in their opening at-bats.
Luke De Vries (Irvine, CA) did what he often does to begin games, get a hit, which was a single to left center and Rylan Morris (Fullerton, CA) moved him to third on a double. Following a lineout by Tyler Preece, Mark Kirkland (Redlands, CA) made it 1-0 on a groundout to second.
With two away Will Cell (Seattle, WA) extended the inning with an infield single to third that allowed Morris to make it 2-0. Following the fourth hit of the inning, a Kaiya Saito (Bellevue, WA) single up the middle, Gabriel Ceja (Long Beach, CA) found the three-four hole advancing Cell the final 180 feet for a 3-0 U of R lead. Aziz Bishop (Baltimore, MD) did make it a six-hit inning for the Bulldogs, but the bases were left loaded as Redlands batted around.
Bulldog starter Nathan Buchan (Mercer Island, WA) got the Kingsmen in the bottom of the first, but in the second they scored twice on a pair of RBI-singles to cut the deficit to one, 3-2. The next inning saw the game-tying run score for CLU as they added a sacrifice fly to left.
With a scoreless next two innings, the game-winning play came in the sixth for the Maroon and Grey capitalizing on a CLU error and collecting a pair of hits. Saito started off the inning with a base hit to third but was taken off the base paths following a Ceja fielder's choice. A groundout by Sebastian Mejorado (Oeanside, CA) advanced Ceja to second and that then led to a Jake Burgess (Riverside, CA) walk to put two runners on. De Vries then singled to the right side loading the bases and Morris followed reaching on an error by the shortstop that allowed two runners to come across moving the score to 5-3.
In the bottom of the sixth Gavin Duenez (Redlands, CA) relieved Buchan with one on and one out. After allowing a hit to the first batter he faced, he got a fielder's choice and a lineout to end the frame stranding the tying runners.
Duenez stranded a runner in the seventh before getting himself into a jam with runners on the corners in the eighth with two outs. But he was able to come up big with a strikeout to keep the two run lead intact.
Brett Edwards (Santa Monica, CA) came on in the ninth and worked around a two-out single to secure his eighth save of the season, the second most in program history. The record is held by Derek Johnson who had 11 in 2009.
Buchan earned his 10th win, tying him for the seventh most in program history, as he threw 5.1 innings giving up seven hits, three runs, two walks, a hit batter, and posting three strikeouts. Duenez finished with 2.2 scoreless innings.
At the plate De Vries and Saito had four of the nine Bulldog hits. Burgess was the lone other player to reach base multiple times adding a single and a walk.
The win advances Redlands to the full SCIAC Tournament bracket, which is double elimination. Their first opponent is the same one they played three times last week, the University of La Verne. The Leopards are the No. 1 seed after winning the regular season SCIAC title. The first pitch is set for 3:00 p.m. Thursday afternoon, May 8 in La Verne.
