Grand Canyon Records 7-0 Shutout Win Over UNLV

Tuesday, February 17

Brazell Stadium

7 p.m.

Grand Canyon

4-0

UNLV

2-2

UNLV

Grand Canyon

Paul Panaccione belted his first-career HR in Tuesday's 7-0 win over UNLV.

Photo by: Josh Hauser

2/17/2015 9:18:00 PM | Baseball

Box Score

Lopes use trio of pitchers to blank visiting Rebels

The Grand Canyon University baseball team (4-0) remained perfect on the season after taking down visiting UNLV (2-2), 7-0, Tuesday night at Brazell Stadium in Phoenix, Ariz.

Click here to listen to Michael Potter's postgame interview with pitching coach Nathan Choate and here to hear his interview with Jake Repavich.

"We want our guys to feel good about themselves, not be cocky or arrogant, but to know that they compete against anyone and that's what we told them after the game tonight," said head coach Andy Stankiewicz.

After two scoreless innings of play, Paul Panaccione put the Lopes in front in the home half of the third, belting a two-run home run over the left field wall—his first career round-tripper.Panaccione came around to score GCU's third run of the game in the bottom of the fifth after Josh Meyer connected on a RBI single to right to make the score 3-0 in favor of the home team.

The Lopes went on to tack on two runs in both the sixth and eighth innings to extend their lead to 6-0. The sixth inning was highlighted by a pair of two-out RBI doubles from David Walker and Chad De La Guerra. GCU scored on a fielder's choice and capitalized on a wild pitch for its pair of runs in the eighth.

"We had a couple of nice two-out knocks," added Stankiewicz. "Those are hard to come by and anytime we can score with two outs it means guys are staying on the ball pretty hard."

Zebastian Valenzuela got the start on the hill and held the Rebels in check for the first three innings, not allowing a run and recording a pair of strikeouts in three innings of work. Venezuela gave way to Jake Repavich in the fourth and the freshman was lights out, tossing five innings of one-hit shutout ball. The left-hander fanned three and issued just one walk en route to picking up first collegiate win. Ruben Rincon came in and pitched a scoreless ninth to seal the victory for the Lopes.

"Repavich did a great job, he had a real good fall and he throws his fastball to both sides of the plate and has good command of his breaking ball," said Stankiewicz. "He was great today and we needed it and has established himself as a guy we can go to."

The Lopes will now hit the road for a weekend series at Cal Poly. The three-game set from San Luis Obispo, Calif., will get underway Friday evening with the opening game of the weekend slated to get underway at 7 p.m. (Arizona Time). Fans can visit www.gculopes.com for more information on the 2015 baseball season.

GCU 7, UNLV 0