Lopes fan 19, take game 1

Thursday, March 8

Phoenix, Ariz.

6 p.m.

Grand Canyon

4-8

Penn State

4-6

Penn St.

Grand Canyon

3/8/2018 9:21:00 PM | Baseball

Box Score

By: Mark Oshidari

The Grand Canyon baseball team had an all-around win to open a three game set against Penn State on Thursday night.

"It was a really nice effort by Jake Wong," said head coach Andy Stankiewicz. "It all begins on the mound, that's the name of the game. He established himself on the mound and we got good quality work. We put some good at-bats together and we put balls in play. We had a nice defensive game, it was a nice clean game. Probably the cleanest game we've had all year. We just have to learn from it, come back out here tomorrow and get after it."

GCU pitchers struck out a record (since the return to DI) 19 Nittany Lions, led by a career-high by Jake Wong (2-0). Wong finished with 10 strikeouts, including 64 strikes on 94 total pitches. He walked none and scattered four hits, while allowing no runs.

The GCU bullpen of Nick Ohanian and Coen Wynne combined to record a strikeout for every out, tallying nine in three frames.

Offensively, GCU got it going early with a combined five runs and five hits in the first two innings and did not look back.

The Lopes finished the night with nine hits, two each by Pikai Winchester, Tyler Wyatt and Griffin Barnes. A total of seven different Lopes had RBI as GCU scored in four different innings.

The Lopes improved to 22-15 all-time against the Big-Ten, including the first win in their first match-up with Penn State.

GCU is back in action on Friday at 6 p.m. Mike Lundin is expected to take the hill for the Lopes.