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Oregon State loses final home series to Cougars

Washington State wins game three 7-6 thanks to RBI base hit from catcher Jay Ponciano

John Daly

Issue date: 5/18/09 Section: Sports
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Washington State's Garry Kuykendall scores in the Cougars 7-6 win over Oregon State on Friday. Kuykendall scored three times in the opening game of the series. WSU topped Oregon State again 7-6 on Sunday to win the series 2-1.
Media Credit: Cory Reed
Washington State's Garry Kuykendall scores in the Cougars 7-6 win over Oregon State on Friday. Kuykendall scored three times in the opening game of the series. WSU topped Oregon State again 7-6 on Sunday to win the series 2-1.
Despite momentary explosions of spectacular hitting throughout the weekend, the Oregon State University baseball team dropped two of three games to the red-hot visiting Washington State University Cougars.

With only one Pac-10 series remaining on the schedule, which is away at Stanford this weekend, the Beavers (31-16 overall, 13-11 Pac-10) were emotionally crushed when they lost frustratingly close games to the Cougars (28-22, 16-8) on Friday and Sunday. Both losses came down to the last pitch, where the Beavers fell short with a final score of 7-6 on both occasions.

In Friday's series opener, the Cougars built an early 3-0 lead and roughed sophomore starter Tanner Robles badly enough to cause OSU head coach Pat Casey to go to the bullpen after only three innings.

"You get handcuffed on Friday nights when you start thinking about taking your starter out in the third inning," Casey said. "We did enough to come back, so that wasn't our issue. After we came back, our issue was not putting the ball in play when we needed to."

The Beavers fought back in the bottom of the third, when junior catcher Ryan Ortiz blasted a solo home run to right center, shortly followed by another to deep right by junior designated hitter Adalberto Santos.

Despite hitting a home run again in the eighth for the first multi-home-run game of his career, Santos and company could not top the offensive performance of WSU right-fielder Jared Prince. Neither Robles nor long reliever Ryan Gorton could cool the hot bat of Prince, who went 4-4 with 3 runs batted in to help seal the win for the Cougars on Friday.

The home team, however, won Saturday's game handily. Fueled by a marvelous performance from freshman right-handed starting pitcher Sam Gaviglio, the Beavers went on to rip the Cougars 8-2 and tie the series.
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