NAMPA, Idaho – The Western Oregon baseball team is alive in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference Baseball Championship, coming back from a loss in the first game on Thursday (May 12) against Montana State Billings to pick up a 14-3 victory against host and top-seeded Northwest Nazarene. The Wolves will play on Friday against MSUB at 1 p.m. Mountain Time in the championship round.
 
Senior pitcher Garrett Alvarez picked up the victory with nine solid innings of work on the mound while four players each had three hits to aid a total of 20 WOU hits in the NNU game.
 
GAME ONE – Montana State Billings 10, Western Oregon 2
 
In the opening game of the GNAC Baseball Championship Thursday, MSUB scored the opening seven runs and cruised to the victory.
 
The Wolves responded with a single run in the top of the seventh, getting a single from Forrest Garcia with the bases loaded with two outs.  
 
Joey Crunkilton lined a RBI double in the ninth but could not comeback against the offensive attack of the Yellowjackets.
 
Senior pitcher Darrien went 6 1/3 innings, allowing eight hits with two strikeouts. Koty Fallon and Jacob Fricke combined for the final 1 2/3 innings of scoreless relief.
 
Garcia went 2-for4 with a run batted in to lead the six-hit WOU effort.
 
GAME TWO – Western Oregon 14, Northwest Nazarene 3
 
In a must-win game against the host Crusaders, WOU went to work offensively out of the starting gate. In the top of the first, the Wolves got lead off singles from Jay Leverett and Erik Long. Both advanced after Trevor Podratz drew a walk. After fouling the first pitch of his at-bat, Kyle Vanderkin came up with the big hit, doubling down the left field for an early 2-0 lead.
 
Cody Poznanski began a two-run second inning with a double and was moved to third on a Garcia sacrifice bunt. Leverett bounced a single through the left side to bring in Poznanski. A balk and passed ball advanced Leverett to third, in position to tag up on a RBI sacrifice fly from Erik Long and make it a 4-0 game.
 
Justin Wakem pushed the lead to 5-0 with a one-out solo homer to left field, his second of the season, in the top of the sixth.
 
Garrett Alvarez pitched beautifully with the early run support, limiting NNU to three hits over their six innings.
 
Both teams had big innings in their respective halves of the seventh inning. Western utilized the long ball with a leadoff homer from Podratz and a two-run blast to deep left field by Nathan Etheridge after Vanderkin walked. Leverett came to the plate later in the innings with two runners on a lifted a single into center field to score Marcus Madden for a 9-0 lead. The Crusader scratched across three scores on five hits in the bottom of the inning to slice the WOU lead to 9-3.
 
The Wolves had a definitive response that quelled any hint of a late-game comeback. A two-out error on a Madden ground ball extended what could have been a shutdown inning and put two runners aboard. Wakem continued his hot hitting lining an opposite-field single to score Vanderkin from second. Poznanski followed with another single to right, this time pushing Madden across the dish and Garcia added a third run-scoring hit to center scoring Wakem. After Leverett was plunked to load the bases, Long and Podratz each drew walks to put the score at 14-3.
 
Alvarez took care of the rest retiring six of the final seven batters to improve to 7-0 on the season. He got 16 fly ball outs and battled through 127 pitches for his sixth complete game of the year.
 
The three-hit club for the Wolves included Leverett, Etheridge, Poznanski and Garcia. The top five in the lineup each knocked in two runners while team reached the 20-hit mark for the third time in 2016.
 
The Wolves will need two wins on Friday to win their second consecutive GNAC Baseball Championship. The winner of the WOU/MSUB matchup will face Northwest Nazarene for the league title after the Crusaders advanced to the championship game with a 4-3 comeback victory over MSUB late Thursday.