Series sweep evades Lopes with Sunday loss

Sunday, April 2

Orem, Utah

11 a.m. (MST)

Grand Canyon

17-10, 8-4

Utah Valley

15-12, 3-4

Grand Canyon

Utah Valley

4/2/2023 1:15:00 PM | Baseball

Box Score

GCU uses 6 pitchers on bullpen day, surrenders pair of 4-run innings

By: Josh Hauser

OREM, Utah — Grand Canyon already had a series win secured entering Sunday's game at Utah Valley, but the Lopes missed out on a sweep with an 11-7 loss.

The bulk of Utah Valley's damage came in a pair of four-run innings. In both cases, defensive miscues extended innings for a GCU pitching staff that used six arms and yielded 14 hits.

"The goal is always to get the series," Lopes head coach Gregg Wallis said. "But obviously once you get the first two, we're looking to close it out and get three wins out here. We just didn't play clean enough to win. Not necessarily the errors that show up on the scoreboard, but we didn't make defensive adjustments well enough. A few too many mistakes where we didn't get outs."

The Lopes (17-10, 8-4 WAC) were off to a good start for a series sweep with a four-run first inning. The first four GCU batters reached with the latter two coming on RBI singles from junior third baseman Elijah Buries and freshman first baseman Zach Yorke before junior designated hitter Tyler Wilson added another with two outs.

GCU sophomore pitcher Carson Ohl made his first career start and used six pitches to throw a clean first inning.

Utah Valley (14-12, 3-4 WAC) got a run back in the second but regained the lead with a four-run third inning.

GCU was resilient and regained the lead with a three-run fifth inning. After junior center fielder Homer Bush Jr. drew a leadoff walk, he scored when graduate second baseman Zack Gregory doubled. Buries continued the inning with a single on his three-hit day. After a pitching change, GCU had back-to-back productive ground outs to take a 7-6 lead.

Utah Valley quickly tied the score with a run in the bottom of the fifth before breaking it open with four runs on five hits in the seventh inning.

"We wiggled out of some jams but at the end of the day we gave up 11," Wallis said. "We've got to get better, but we know that and they know that. We have to make a couple adjustments and move forward and get better."

Juniors Shawn Triplett and Nathan Ward were the two Lopes to throw scoreless frames in relief.

"A few adjustments here and there," Wallis said. "We have a really good team, but if we don't play clean it's hard to win. It comes down to we've got to pitch a little better, we've got to play better defense and we have to string together quality at bats throughout the course of the whole game. We had two big innings but we didn't put much pressure on them for the other seven."

The Lopes have a midweek makeup game scheduled for Tuesday at UNLV before a quick turnaround for a home WAC weekend series against Seattle U, beginning on Thursday at 6 p.m.at GCU Ballpark.