Grand Canyon leads early, allows eight late runs

Saturday, March 18

Malibu, Calif.

3:00 p.m.

Grand Canyon

5-11

Long Beach State

10-8

Long Beach State

Grand Canyon

3/18/2017 7:09:00 PM | Baseball

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By: Josh Hauser

MALIBU, Calif. - Grand Canyon starting pitcher Jake Repavich tossed four no-hit innings, but Long Beach State scored eight runs in the final third of the ballgame to defeat the Lopes 9-1 on Saturday afternoon.

Repavich retired the first 12 batters he faced. The lefty finished the day with 6.2 innings of work, allowing four runs on four hits.

"Jake threw the ball well," head coach Andy Stankiewicz said. "All of a sudden (Long Beach State) got some runners on. Then Jake started to be a little too fine and put himself in some deeper holes. That's part of his development too. Just keep doing what you've been doing the first five or six innings."

The Lopes turned to some relatively new faces out of the bullpen, with all four relievers having made four or less previous appearances on the season. Tyler Wyatt, Zack McLeod, Jeramy Smith and Josh Sieglitz combined to throw the final 2.1 innings of the game.

"We had to go to our bullpen which has some youth down there," Stankiewicz said. "Right now we're trying to find out who can do what. That's part of the reason we're putting some guys out there to see what situations they can handle. At some point, though, as a team, we have to say enough is enough. We have to start playing better baseball for a full nine innings."

The Lopes scored their first run of the weekend in the home-half of the fourth inning. Cuba Bess legged out his second infield single in as many at bats. The ensuing batter, Zach Malis, worked the count full before doubling to right field to score Bess as GCU grabbed a 1-0 lead.

The Lopes' advantage was short-lived, however, as Long Beach State tied the score in the fifth. A leadoff single came in to score on back-to-back groundouts.

From there, the Dirtbags ran away with things, scoring eight runs between the seventh and eighth innings. Long Beach State used three hits to score three runs in the seventh and used six hits to tack on five more in the eighth.

GCU is set for a rematch with host, Pepperdine, tomorrow afternoon at Eddy D. Field Stadium. First pitch is set for 1 p.m. MST with Lopes' RHP Degan Harte set to face RHP Wil Jensen.