April 28, 2007

CONFERENCE CHAMPIONS!
Lutes Win First Conference Baseball Title in 53 Years

Game One
Game Two

PARKLAND, Wash. – The year was 1954: Dwight Eisenhower was president; postage stamps cost 3 cents and gasoline averaged 29 cents per gallon; the Dow Jones hit a high of 404.39; “From Here to Eternity” won the Academy Award for Best Picture; the Minneapolis Lakers beat the Syracuse Nationals for the NBA title; and the New York Giants, with Willie Mays patrolling centerfield, swept Cleveland in the World Series.

Oh yes, and Pacific Lutheran College beat Central Washington College, two games to one, to win its second consecutive Evergreen Conference baseball championship.

That was the last year that Pacific Lutheran won a conference baseball championship – until the 2007 season.

Pacific Lutheran swept Puget Sound by 10-4 and 16-2 scores on Saturday to wrap up its first-ever Northwest Conference baseball championship. The Lutes, who improved to 31-7 overall and to 20-3 in the conference, host the Loggers (16-20-1, 13-10 NWC) in the final regular season game at noon on Sunday. No matter the outcome of that game, the Lutes have claimed the championship with George Fox finishing second at 19-5. With the championship comes the conference's automatic bid to the NCAA regional tournament scheduled for May 16-20 at a site to be determined.

Joe DiPietro set a PLU baseball single-season record with his 10th win of the season, allowing seven hits while walking three and striking out 10 in the first game. He eclipsed the old record of nine he shared with Brian Farman, who originally set the mark in 1999. DiPietro improved to 7-1 against the conference and in eight NWC starts has thrown five complete games.

The Lutes gave the senior from Yakima all of the runs he needed when they scored five runs in the third inning. Ryan Thorne opened the inning with a single, moved up a base on a balk, and then scored on a single by Jordan Post (pictured at right). With one out, Justin Whitehall singled, and when the ball was misplayed in the outfield, Post scored from first and Whitehall advanced to third. He scored the inning’s third run on a sacrifice fly, and the other two scored on consecutive doubles by Brandon Sales, Bryce Depew and Jared Simon.

Puget Sound got back in the game with three runs in the top of the fourth on RBI hits by Austin Kuehn and AJ Jorg and a PLU error, but the Lutes played add-on to pull away. They scored a run in the fourth on Post’s RBI single, added another in the fifth on Simon’s fifth homer of the season, and then scored three in the sixth on a two-run double by Tyler Green and an RBI single by Logan Andrews.

Chris Dunbar hit a homer in the seventh, his second this season, to close out the scoring for Puget Sound.

The Lutes collected 15 hits in the game, including four by Post, three by Simon and two each by Thorne and Depew. No Puget Sound player had more than one base hit.

In the second game, Pacific Lutheran got its second consecutive strong pitching performance from Kael Fisher. The senior, who threw a complete-game four-hit shutout last Saturday against Whitworth, allowed only one run on four hits in six innings of work to improve his record to 5-0. Three relief pitchers threw an inning each to close out the game. In total, the Loggers managed nine hits against the four PLU hurlers, including two each by Tim Steggall and Dunbar.

Meanwhile, the Lutes got to Puget Sound starter Ryan Gustafson (6-2) for six two-out runs on six hits in the first inning. Tyler Green hit an RBI double and Whitehall and Kris Hansen both followed with run-scoring singles. Brandon Sales drove in two more runs with a base hit, and Roger Guzman, who led off with a single, capped the rally with a RBI single.

The Lutes continued to pound the ball, producing a total of 18 hits against six different Puget Sound pitchers. Green, Hansen and Sales all had three hits, and Sales drove in four runs.

- PLU -