May 19, 2007

Chapman Sweeps Lutes for Regional Championship

Game One
Game Two

Joe DiPietro - complete game effort

ORANGE, Calif. - As sweet as the victories have been, the losses were that much harder to swallow.

Pacific Lutheran’s record-setting baseball season came to a sudden end on Saturday as host Chapman swept a pair of games from the Lutes, 10-7 and 1-0, to win the NCAA Division III West Region championship. As a result, the host Panthers, the No. 2-ranked team in the country, head to the Division III World Series next week in Wisconsin.

For the Lutes, ranked No. 15 in the country, the season is over.

Chapman, the regional tournament's No. 1 seed, needed to beat the Lutes twice on Saturday, and it used a pair of yeoman pitching efforts to turn the trick. In the first game, Devin Drag threw a complete game on two days rest. Though he allowed the Lutes 11 hits and seven runs, he pitched out of trouble often enough to get his team the victory. For Drag, it was his 15th win of the season without a defeat.

His teammates gave him plenty of support with 15 hits. Tyler Dean got the Panthers off to a strong start, hitting a three-run homer in the first and a two-run double in the second to give Chapman the early lead. The Panthers held a 9-4 advantage in the bottom of the seventh when Jared Simon clubbed his sixth homer of the season, a three-run shot, to pull the Lutes to within a run. Chapman added one more run in the eighth and Drag closed out the Lutes in the final two innings.

The Lutes, the tournament's No. 2 seed, had plenty of scoring opportunities with 11 hits, but they also left 11 runners on the bases.

In the second game, Wayde Kitchens did his teammate Drag one better. Kitchens, a mountain of a man at 6-7, 270 pounds, threw a five-hit shutout while working on only one day of rest, and that against the team that led the tournament in batting average through the first three days. Kitchens struck out 11 PLU batters to improve his season record to 12-2.

Chapman scored its only run in the third inning when Kurt Yacko led off with a single and eventually scored on a one-out base hit by Ryan Prechtl. Other than that, PLU starter Joe DiPietro, also pitching on two days rest, was stellar. Though he gave up 10 hits, he pitched out of several jams. DiPietro took the tough-luck loss and closed out his senior season with an 11-3 record.

“Given the circumstances, Joe pitched the best game of his career. That was a tough way to lose the game, 1-0,” said PLU head coach Geoff Loomis. “As good as Joe was today, their pitcher was equal to that. It’s hard to feel bad about losing a game that way.”

Pacific Lutheran did have a couple of scoring chances, but not many of them. Its best chance came in the seventh when Ryan Thorne, who had two of PLU’s five hits, led off with a double. Jordan Post followed with a line drive, but his potential RBI hit was taken away on Jake Hurst’s diving catch. Tyler Green then fanned and Justin Whitehall grounded out to end the inning.

PLU’s final chance came in the ninth when Roger Guzman led off with a single, but Kitchens retired the final three batters to finish the game and the Lutes’ season.

“I think that by tomorrow we’re all going to realize that we had an amazing year and when we reflect back on this it’s going to be remembering all of the highlights rather than remembering what happened today,” said Loomis.

DiPietro, Simon and Post earned all-tournament honors.

- PLU -