The NAIA No. 2-ranked Sea Lions banged out 15 hits and used a late rally to pick up a 7-5 Golden State Athletic Conference win against San Diego Christian at Stars Field Friday. The game was the first of an earlier scheduled doubleheader that was supposed to played on Saturday. Due to impending rain, the twinbill was split up over two days. The first pitch for the seven-inning game two is at 10:00 am Saturday at Stars Field, moved up two hours.
PLNU improved to 13-3-1 with Friday's win and are now 5-1 in conference. The Hawks fell to 1-8 overall, 1-6 GSAC.
Tyler Kuehl collected three of PLNU's 15 hits while
Allen Boyer,
Alex Cameron,
Steven Winnick had two hits apiece. Fox drove in a pair of runners and
Jack Diamond hit a two-run homerun.
Boyer doubled and later scored on a wild pitch to snap a scoreless deadlock in the third. The Hawks evened the score in the fourth after stringing three hits together off of PLNU starter
Robby Ross.
Quiet offensively for the first few innings of the game, the bats woke up starting when Diamond's shot in the sixth pushed the Sea Lions back on top by two. A sac fly in the Hawk half of the frame sliced to margin in half.
Rashad Taylor and Kuehl each had RBI hits in the seventh as PLNU's advantage grew to 5-2. SDCC scored an unearned run in the seventh and a two-run homer from Mike Bando in the eighth tied the game once again.
Winnick led off the ninth with a single and
Wes Kartch smoked a one-out double to put both runners in scoring position. Kuehl was intentionally walked to set up a force out at any base but that strategy went up in smoke when Fox laced a two-run double to right off of relief pitcher Brandon James.
Kenny Houser closed out the Hawks in the ninth to pick up the win. Houser (2-1) gave up just one hit in two innings of relief. Ross went seven innings but was not involved in the decision.
SDCC used three hurlers Friday. Starter China McCarney allowed three runs in six innings of work. James was hung with the loss.
Brian Charnock had three of the nine Hawks hits.
