IRVINE — The UC Irvine baseball team came into the final game of its important Big West Conference series against UC Santa Barbara on Sunday afternoon riding the momentum of a stirring one-run win on Saturday night.
Whatever momentum remained dissipated quickly.
The Gauchos squashed the Anteaters’ hopes of a series win with a seven-run first inning, knocking out starting pitcher Dan Wheeler in a 17-7 victory as the No. 25 Gauchos (33-11 overall, 21-3 Big West) all but clinched the conference title.
UCSB has a 5½-game lead on second-place Cal Poly (SLO) with six league games remaining, and owns a tiebreaker over the Mustangs, having swept the season series in San Luis Obispo last week.
The loss leaves UCI (26-19, 11-10) tied for fifth place and in need of a strong finish to try to make something out of the 2022 season. The Anteaters likely need to win the majority of their 11 remaining games to get consideration for an at-large bid to the 64-team NCAA Tournament.
The Anteaters have weekday games against Loyola Marymount (16-27-1) and No. 9 UCLA (30-17) plus three-game series against conference opponents UC Riverside (7-36), Cal State Bakersfield (16-27) and Cal State Fullerton (18-27). Only UCLA has a winning record and victories against sub-.500 teams are often of minimal value in the Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) used to judge teams’ strength of schedule.
“Historically the only place that matters in the Big West is first place, so I’m not looking at the standings,” UCI head coach Ben Orloff said. “I’m just looking at the rest of the season as a chance to get better and have good performances.
“We just haven’t been consistent this season. We have some good games and some bad games. We’ve been competitive but haven’t had the kind of success we expected.”
The Anteaters started the game in a hole, having used a staff game – five pitchers – to outlast the Gauchos, 11-10, on Saturday. What they needed most from Wheeler was innings. But the Gauchos had five hits, a walk and two hit batters in the first inning for their seven runs.
Orloff dug deep in the bullpen thereafter, using five pitchers who had pitched a combined 20 innings all season. The Anteaters and starting pitcher Michael Frias, who was 5-2 in 11 starts this season, parted ways earlier this month.
“We had a staff game Saturday and knew we had a thin bullpen Sunday,” Orloff said.
Redshirt freshman Michael Vizcaino will get more opportunities after an impressive midweek game against San Diego (USD).
The Gauchos led 12-0 at one point and finished with 14 hits, nine walks and six hit batters. Christian Kirtley and Broc Mortensen homered.
Justin Torres and Connor McGuire each had two hits and two RBIs as the Anteaters got as close as 13-6. Taishi Nakawake went 3 for 4 with a walk and a run scored, Nathan Church went 2 for 4 with two runs scored and Luke Spillane went 2 for 5 with an RBI.
Elsewhere in the Big West …
Long Beach State 4, UC Riverside 0: Juaron Watts-Brown made history on Sunday, throwing the first complete game no-hitter in the history in LBSU history in the win at Blair Field. The freshman right-hander also had 16 strikeouts, one short of the program record, in LBSU’s fifth shutout victory of the season. The only other no-hitter in LBSU history was a combined no-hitter by Chris Mathewson and Darren McCaughan on March 1, 2015.
UC San Diego 6, CS Fullerton 4 (10 innings): UCSD’s Crew Robinson hit a two-run home run in the 10th inning to give the Tritons (21-24, 11-10) a walk-off win in the series finale. Fynn Chester got his third start of the season and pitched four innings, allowing just one earned run on five hits while walking one and striking out a pair for Fullerton (18-27, 11-10). JT Navyac had a two-run triple for the Titans, his third triple in the past six games.