(FRESNO, Calif.)
Cole Colleran saved his best start of the season for the PacWest Tournament championship round, throwing six shutout innings for PLNU Baseball and leaving with a 3-0 lead.
But Azusa Pacific rallied back to score 10 runs in the final three innings to win 10-6 and claim the PacWest's automatic berth into the NCAA West Regional.
Point Loma, as the No. 3 seed in the latest NCAA West Region rankings, is still expected to receive an at-large bid into the regional, with the brackets being released on Sunday night.
"Tough ball games, congratulations to Azusa Pacific," Head Coach
Justin James said. "They played really good baseball the past couple of days and deserved to be in the position that they're in. I thought our guys played really good baseball too.
"Obviously there's some things that you can look back on, a certain pitch here or there, but I think the character of the team really showed that no matter what the score was or how things were going, they played the exact brand of baseball they're taught to."
After Thursday afternoon's 9-6 defeat to APU, PLNU needed two wins against the Cougars on Friday to win the PacWest Tournament title. The Sea Lions hoped that Colleran could pitch deep into the game, which he did by tying his longest outing of the year.
"He was lights outs," James said of his starting pitcher. "It was exactly what we needed, having to play an extra game, and he gave us a chance."
Colleran managed to work out of multiple jams and strand nine Cougar baserunners in his six innings of work.
"At practice every day we're always working on executing and that's what it comes down to, making a pitch when it matters," Colleran said. "The moment is never too big because we always put in the work in practice."
The lefthander was backed by the offense early, with
Jakob Christian launching his 26th home run of the season to give the Sea Lions the lead in the third inning.
PLNU then added a pair in the fourth, taking advantage of an APU error to score two unearned runs on an RBI-double from
Jack Malone and a two-out RBI-single from
Seth Ryberg.
The Cougars got to within one in the top of the seventh with a two-run jack, before the Sea Lions answered right back through
Scott Anderson in the bottom half.
With two outs, Anderson swung at a first pitch fastball and lined it to right to score Ryberg, who doubled to left center earlier in the inning.
But the Cougars scored six runs, five of which came on a pair of long balls, in the top of the eighth to take a commanding 8-4 advantage.
Malone's RBI fielder's choice grounder in the bottom half got PLNU one closer, only for APU to score two more in the ninth.
The Sea Lions didn't give up though, getting three-straight runners on base while down to their final out. Anderson and Christian singled, bringing up
Hunter Otjen who singled himself to cut Point Loma's deficit to four.
The tying run was then standing in the on-deck circle but APU induced a game-ending strikeout to end PLNU's comeback bid.
Point Loma (36-14 overall) will now wait for Sunday's selection show to see which seed it receives in next week's regional.
"We've been there before several times," James said. "We have guys who've played in a ton of postseason games so there's really nothing to change. We're going to keep it as consistent as we always do and preach the same things.
"We're excited to be in the position that we're in and hopefully we can correct a few things that we saw from this week and put ourselves in a good position to make a deep run."
