LONG BEACH, Calif. — The Long Beach State Dirtbags broke a seventh-inning deadlock with two late runs and backed it with shutdown pitching to defeat UC San Diego 3-1 Friday night at Bohl Diamond at Blair Field in the opener of a three-game Big West series.<\/p>\n
The win gives the Dirtbags another key conference victory after taking a road series against UC Davis last weekend.<\/p>\n
Long Beach State struck first in the opening inning after Camden Gasser<\/a> drew a leadoff walk and advanced to third on a single to right by Trotter Enright<\/a>. Dylan Lina<\/a> then lifted a sacrifice fly to center field that brought Gasser home for a 1-0 Dirtbags lead.<\/p>\n UC San Diego answered in the fourth inning. Trevian Martinez was hit by a pitch and later moved to third after Ryson Ujimori singled to right field. Thomas Maher tied the game with a sacrifice fly to right that scored Martinez and evened the score at 1-1.<\/p>\n The game remained tied through the middle innings as sophomore right-hander Ka’imi Kahalekai<\/a> delivered in his third start of the year. Kahalekai held the Tritons to one run on three hits across 5.1 innings while striking out seven batters.<\/p>\n UC San Diego threatened multiple times throughout the night, but Long Beach State pitching consistently worked out of jams. Kahalekai stranded two runners in scoring position in the third and escaped another tight situation in the sixth before exiting.<\/p>\n The Dirtbags finally broke through in the bottom of the eighth inning against the Tritons bullpen. Kaiden Smaka<\/a> opened the frame with a double to right center before Murchael Turner<\/a> advanced him to third with a sacrifice bunt. After Justin Roulston<\/a> drew an intentional walk, Damon Valdez<\/a> lined a single to left field that scored Smaka and pushed Long Beach State ahead 2-1.<\/p>\n Later in the inning, Smith Chandler<\/a> worked a bases-loaded walk that forced home Roulston from third and extended the Dirtbags lead to 3-1.<\/p>\n Graduate right-hander Caleb Anderson<\/a> took over in relief and was dominant once again. Anderson tossed two hitless innings with four strikeouts and no walks to earn his third win of the season. Tyler Gebb<\/a> closed the door in the ninth inning for his first save of the season. The right-hander allowed no hits and no runs in the final frame to secure the victory.<\/p>\n Long Beach State totaled eight hits in the win. Enright finished 2-for-5, while Valdez went 2-for-4 with 1 RBI. Gasser reached base three times with two walks and a hit, while Smaka added the key eighth-inning double.<\/p>\n The series continues Saturday night at Bohl Diamond at Blair Field with first pitch scheduled for 6:05 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONG BEACH, Calif. — The Long Beach State Dirtbags broke a seventh-inning deadlock with two late runs and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297306,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-297305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}