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With sweep, OSU moves up in baseball rankings

Beavers' second sweep of season over ranked team bumps them up in rankings; some players make big debut in Corvallis

Casey Grogan

Issue date: 3/13/07 Section: Sports
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Junior Daniel Turpen, who is 9-0 in his career as a Beaver, picked up his fifth win of the season in OSU's 3-2 victory over Evansville Sunday, proving that the Beavers' bullpen might be just fine even after the loss of significant arms from last year.
Media Credit: Luke Wenker
Junior Daniel Turpen, who is 9-0 in his career as a Beaver, picked up his fifth win of the season in OSU's 3-2 victory over Evansville Sunday, proving that the Beavers' bullpen might be just fine even after the loss of significant arms from last year.
A weekend sweep of the Purple Aces has done wonders for the OSU baseball team's standing among the nation's best.

The three game sweep of Evansville (9-7 overall) was the second sweep of the season for the Beavers (17-3) against a ranked opponent. The Beavers earlier swept the Georgia Bulldogs in three games.

"Sweep anytime feels good," said first baseman Jordan Lennerton. "In front of the home crowd, they were here supporting us. We worked hard and got it done. We are happy with the sweep."

Entering the weekend Oregon State was ranked as high as No. 6 in various polls. A three-game sweep and losses by other teams in the nation's top 10 moved the Beavers up in the college baseball polls. Baseball America and College Baseball Newspaper now rank OSU No. 5 - an improvement from No. 9 and No. 7 last week. Rivals.com, a poll that has been generous to OSU early in the season, moved the Beavers two places from No. 6 to No. 4.

Against Evansville, many new faces made their Goss Stadium debut. Thursday in game one, Lennerton launched a two-run homer over the leftfield wall, his first home run in orange and black.

"It felt good," Lennerton said. "I'm playing after Bill Rowe who made a big impact here. I needed to make a good impression here with the home fans. It felt really good to get my first home run out of the way in the first home game of the season."

Lennerton's home run helped the Beavers get the 9-2 win over the Purple Aces. Game two featured a wonderful pitching performance from Oregon State's Joe Paterson and a surprise on the offensive side.

Paterson threw seven strong innings against Evansville, the most he has thrown at OSU. The Beaver southpaw benefited from strong defense that included three straight inning-ending double plays. Evansville led the Beavers 2-0 into the sixth inning.

In the bottom of the sixth the first two OSU batters reached base safely. After second baseman Joey Wong flew out, designated hitter Jason Ogata was hit by a pitch. With the bases loaded, catcher Mitch Canham went down two strikes. After fouling off a pitch Canham in dramatic fashion hit a slicing line drive down the right field line, before the ball went foul it struck the right field foul pole for a grand slam home run.
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