Seattle University baseball had another successful weekend after taking two of three games against Grand Canyon. This marked their fourth consecutive WAC conference series win and kept them in first place in the WAC through 34 games. Scoring early and late was the theme for the Redhawks last weekend. Of the 18 total runs scored by the Redhawks for the series, five were scored in the first two innings and nine were scored in either the eighth or ninth inning.
The Redhawks won the series opener on Friday with the score of 10-3. After the Redhawks jumped out to an early 4-0 lead, the Antelopes scored one in the fifth inning and two more in the seventh to pull within one run. But the Redhawks scored twice in the bottom of the seventh and exploded for four more runs in the bottom of the eighth, putting the game far out of reach.
Sheldon Stober led the way for the Redhawks at the plate going 4-for-5 with three RBI and three runs scored.
On the mound, Ted Hammond picked up the win and notched a quality start, going seven innings and giving up three runs on three hits. Zach Wolf came on in the eighth to finish out the game and picked up his third save of the season.
On Saturday, the Redhawks picked up another win and took down the Antelopes by the score of 4-1. Stober kept up the hot hitting from the previous game and hit a first inning home run to help the Redhawks jump out to another early lead. Redhawk pitching allowed seven hits in the game but only gave up one run as they stranded seven Antelope runners in scoring position.
Grant Gunning picked up the win in relief, pitching four scoreless innings, while Zach Wolf picked up another save, his fourth of the season.
The Redhawks saved the dramatics for the series finale on Sunday but were unable to pull off the series sweep as they lost in extra innings to the Antelopes by the score of 8-4.
“I was very pleased with our offense and how they controlled the strike zone,” said Coach Donny Harrel. “We did not chase a lot of borderline pitches and gave ourselves opportunities to have success.”
Coach Harrel also praised the pitching performances of Hammond on Friday night and Wolf’s two saves over the weekend. He did, however, say there’s still room to improve on defense and despite forcing Sunday’s game into extra innings he was a bit disappointed with the slow start, considering their ability to score early in the first two games of the series.
“We made some silly mistakes on defense on Sunday that we need to clean up and did not get key hits earlier in the game to make the game more interesting.”
Seattle U heads out of town to Orem, Utah this weekend to take on Utah Valley before heading back home to take on UT Rio Grande Valley the following weekend at Bannerwood Park in Bellevue.
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