The Barometer Online

Issue date: 4/10/07 Section: Sports

Media Credit: Sam Leinen Avoiding the Pac-10 cellar by coming back to beat USC on Saturday, the OSU baseball team will face Portland for the first time this year.

Taking two of three games from Southern California over the weekend, the ninth-ranked Oregon State baseball team will take a conference break today to take on in-state rival Portland. The Beavers (25-7, 2-4 Pac-10) and Pilots (14-16, 2-4 West Coast) will play each other for the first time this season and will be the first of three games against the two schools this year. They will also face each other again on April 24 in Portland and May 15 at Goss Stadium.

The Beavers are coming off a dramatic 9-8 win in 11 innings against the Trojans on Saturday. First baseman Jordan Lennerton concluded a successful weekend by hitting a walk-off home run in the 11th inning to give OSU its second win of Pac-10 play.

"This is a huge win," Lennerton said. "It would have been pretty tough to come back from 1-5 (to start Pac-10 play). Today's win was huge to keep our egos up and stay positive."

This came after the Beavers lost a 5-0 lead in the sixth by giving up seven runs in the inning. Starter Daniel Turpen was effective through five plus innings until the Trojan bats started to wake up. Down 8-6, the Beavers tied the game up with a two-run shot by senior Mike Lissman in the bottom of the eighth. Eddie Kunz had his longest outing in an OSU uniform by pitching five and a third innings and allowing just one run on two hits and striking out five.

"We showed a lot of character," said OSU head coach Pat Casey. "Things haven't been going our way and sometimes you need little things to change some situations; obviously, we've been struggling and hopefully this will springboard us into the next week and getting after the next Pac-10 series."

Junior shortstop Darwin Barney also had a big weekend at the plate for OSU. In three games, he batted .385 (5-for-13) with two doubles, a pair of RBIs, three runs, a walk, and two-for-two in stolen bases. He also had a slugging percentage of .538 and an on-base percentage of .429.

Oregon State is now ranked ninth in this week's USA Today/ESPN baseball coaches poll. In this week's other polls, the Beavers are ranked No. 8 by Baseball America magazine, No. 9 by Collegiate Baseball newspaper, and No. 10 by the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association.

The Beavers have an all-time record of 140-60 against Portland in a series dating back to 1909. Last season, OSU took wins of 3-1 at home and 14-9 in Portland. The Pilots, however, took the last game between the teams by a score of 20-13 in 12 innings in Corvallis.

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