WAC Tournament hopes dashed in single day

Thursday, May 23

Mesa, Ariz.

8:45 p.m.

Grand Canyon

34-23

UT Rio Grande Valley

29-24

Grand Canyon

UTRGV

Photo by: David Kadlubowski

5/24/2024 1:22:00 AM | Baseball, Paul Coro

Box Score Photo Gallery

Lopes eliminated by 2nd Thursday loss despite leading UTRGV 9-4

By: Paul Coro

MESA, Ariz. – Since early March, Grand Canyon was the WAC's hottest hitting team with the most powerful pitching and fabulous fielding that dominated the regular season for a conference championship.

One postseason day told another story.

Elijah Buries

GCU won its fourth consecutive WAC regular-season championship by five games but was stunned twice Thursday at the WAC Tournament, following a 4-2 afternoon loss to No. 5 seed Tarleton State with a 10-9 loss to No. 7 seed UT Rio Grande Valley just 10 minutes before the Hohokam Stadium clock struck midnight.

As the WAC regular-season champion, GCU could still earn the conference's automatic NCAA regional berth if Tarleton State wins the WAC Tournament on Saturday. Tarleton State is ineligible for NCAA postseason play because it is in the last year of its Division I transition period.

The Lopes (34-22) were eliminated from
the WAC Tournament despite holding a 9-4 lead in the nightcap, giving up six unanswered runs to suffer their fifth loss in the seven games since clinching and their sixth defeat in their past seven WAC Tournament games.

"I'll have to process that and figure out why we play so well in the regular season and don't seem to play well here," GCU head coach Gregg Wallis said. "It's disappointing. Everyone's frustrated. I've been here for every Division I Grand Canyon game (since the 2014 return to D-I), and this was the best team. To have it end one day is hard to take, hard to process. Everyone's at a loss for what just happened."

GCU went 1 for 13 with runners in scoring position in the first game to waste winnable pitching and then allowed 10 runs on 15 hits in the second game to waste reaching base 19 times and scoring nine runs.

"We're definitely stunned," Lopes senior third baseman Eli Paton said. "We came in as the No. 1 seed and thought we were going to be able to beat those lower seeds right away, but they came out ready to go. Our first game, we didn't come ready to play, but we competed really well in the second game and left it all on the field."

The Lopes' second Thursday game was pushed to an 8:45 p.m. first pitch, and the Lopes got started even later. GCU made three errors in the first inning, matching their season-high total for a game and missing out on a double-play opportunity to hand UTRGV a 3-0 lead. GCU had been an elite fielding team at .980 in WAC play this season.

The Lopes answered and eventually took control, looking like a team that was taking control with five consecutive wins needed to claim the WAC Tournament title.

GCU put together a four-hit second that included RBI singles from senior right fielder Eddy Pelc, sophomore shortstop Emilio Barreras and senior left fielder Tyler Wilson, who tied the game at 3-3 and set a GCU all-time record with a 25-game hitting streak, breaking Chad De La Guerra's 2015 record.

UTRGV retook a 4-3 lead after Lopes sophomore right-hander Isaac Lyon hit consecutive batters and allowed a ground-rule double.

Paton, who went 3 for 5, tied the game back at 4-4 with a third-inning RBI single and then led off the top of the fifth inning with a 390-foot home run, his eighth of the season, for a 5-4 lead.

"We had a bunch of momentum," Paton said. "We settled down and got into our groove hittingwise."

The Lopes already had matched their opening-game hit total (eight) at that point but scored four more runs in the inning, capped by Wilson's three-run home run that traveled 407 feet to left field for a 9-4 advantage. It was Wilson's 16th home run of the season.

"It looked like that might propel us into playing great baseball the rest of the weekend, but it didn't work out," Wallis said.

Lyon returned for the fifth inning, when he exceeded 100 pitches for the first time in his career. The Vaqueros scored four runs, including a RBI single from ex-Lopes player Adrian Torres in his 5-for-5 career game. GCU kept the tying run from scoring when Buries alertly took a cutoff throw and caught a runner in a pickle between third base and home.

Much like the final four innings of the first loss, GCU did not take advantage of lead-off batters reaching base in the sixth and eighth innings, setting up UTRGV to take the lead.

With GCU's fifth error extending the seventh inning, Vaqueros shortstop Kade York tied the game on a two-out single in the seventh. In the bottom of the eighth, first baseman Martin Vasquez smashed a lead-off, go-ahead home run 412 feet off Lopes closer Nathan Ward for his 17th of the season.

Buries and pinch-hitter Michael Diaz delivered ninth-inning singles to put runners at the corners with two outs before Barreras' fly ball to left field ended the game with Wilson, the WAC Player of the Year, on deck.

Dustin Crenshaw

"Baseball's tough, and you never know which way it's going to bounce, but I've been thankful for four years of good ball here," Crenshaw said. "It's been a good time.

"It's hard in the moment because the standard here is so high. Winning is never enough, but I think we'll look back one day and appreciate what we've done."

Buries, Crenshaw, Wilson, center fielder Cade Verdusco and pitchers Bryan Webb and Carter Young were part of four consecutive WAC regular-season championships, the first time that had been achieved in 19 years. GCU has won 15 consecutive WAC series, including this season's 23-7 conference record.

"They need to walk out of here with their heads held high because they're champions," Wallis said. "One day doesn't change that."