(Photo: Samantha Maxwell/WCSN)
PHOENIX — A little over two weeks ago, Arizona State baseball played host to Grand Canyon. The Lopes entered Phoenix Municipal Stadium boasting a shiny new No. 25 ranking and were looking to prove that they belonged among the best teams in the nation. Instead, ASU won in a blowout 11-1 game that began a rough 4-7 stretch for GCU, leading to the Lopes falling all the way to No. 126 in the RPI.
Fast forward a little over two weeks, and now ASU is the one riding a hot streak that has shot it all the way up to No. 24. For the Lopes, how sweet would it be to reciprocate the beatdown that the Sun Devils gave them, stripping the opposition of its own shiny new ranking in the process?
For seven innings on Tuesday night, it looked as if GCU would do just that, entering the eighth inning with a 9-2 lead. However, a nine-run explosion in the top of the eighth flipped the game into the Sun Devils favor, and an inning and a half later, the Sun Devils went home with a 13-10 victory. The rally happened so fast that it left everybody questioning what had just happened.
“After being that irritable and upset with the way our team was playing, It just kind of crept up on me pretty quick,” head coach Willie Bloomquist said. “To go ‘Wow, were one base hit away from tying this thing. Oh, we just tied it, and now we’re one base hit away from taking the lead. Oh, we just took the lead.’ So it was a quick burst of excitement.”
The inning began with four straight hits starting with a Luke Keaschall single. The junior second baseman then moved to third on the double by sophomore first baseman Jacob Tobias; before freshman shortstop Luke Hill brought them all home with a three-run home, cutting the lead to four.
Senior infielder Wyatt Crenshaw followed Hill with a double before moving to third when sophomore outfielder Will Rogers flew out for the first out in the inning. Following a walk from freshman center fielder Isaiah Jackson, redshirt freshman outfielder Nick McLain stepped into the box and laced a single through the left side, scoring Crenshaw and knocking GCU graduate right-hander Brodie Cooper-Vassalakis out of the game.
Redshirt sophomore righty Carson Ohl entered for the Lopes and got freshman infielder Nu’u Contrades to strike out for the second out of the inning, but then the onslaught continued for the Sun Devils. Back-to-back walks from sophomore catcher Ryan Campos and Keaschall brought another run home before Tobias ripped a two-RBI single for his second hit of the inning.
With the score now sitting at 9-9, Hill came up for the second time in the inning and followed his three-run home run with an even bigger hit. His two-strike, two-out, two-RBI single through the middle brought home Tobias and Keaschall for Hill’s career-high fifth RBI, putting the Sun Devils up 11-9.
“To have that ability to make those kinds of plays, I think it shows I’m ready to go,” Hill said. “I’ve always believed that. All my teammates believe it, and it’s kind of starting to show a little bit.”
Hill wasn’t the only one taking clutch at-bats. All nine of the Sun Devils’ eighth-inning runs came with two strikes in the count, and the final five runs of the inning came with two outs. Every player came through when it counted, passing the baton to the next guy. Nine runs later, ASU had the lead for good.
“Our motto in there is win every pitch and pass the torch,” Bloomquist said. “You can’t put up a nine spot by yourself. You need a guy to get on base and another guy to keep it going. One after another, you just gotta keep putting together good at-bats, and that’s probably the best display I’ve seen of that all year.”
Following a quick one-two-three bottom of the eighth, that saw junior righty Blake Pivaroff strike out two batters, the Sun Devils were looking to put the game out of reach. Once again, with two outs, McLain came up for his sixth at-bat of the night and crushed a line drive over the left field wall that left his bat with an exit velocity of 110.8, pushing the lead to 13-9.
The two-run home run capped off a dream return for the redshirt freshman that hadn’t seen time in a competitive game since his senior year of high school. McLain finished the night going 3-for-6 with four RBIs and added two RBI singles along with his home run.
“Honestly, on the bus, I was a little nervous,” McLain said. “Then I had my first at-bat, (I was) still a little nervous, and then, after I threw out the guy, I was all good to go. I’m excited to get back on the field. It was an exciting day.”
The play that got McLain back into his groove was a strong throw from the outfield. Redshirt junior righty Matt Tieding struggled out of the gates, allowing a run on an RBI single from freshman designated hitter Zach Yorke. However, on the same play, McLain fired a missile to third base, nabbing the trailing runner with plenty of time.
“Defensively, (McLain) was outstanding,” Bloomquist said. “I think the play that really goes unnoticed is in the first inning when he throws a runner out at third. We were reeling. Run across and nobody out, guys first and third; we were already chasing numbers at that point in time. He guns him out, and all of a sudden, we get out of that with a one spot.”
While McLain’s throw held it to only one run in the first, it would take long for the GCU lineup to break out again. In the first four innings of the game, the Lopes scored seven runs on nine hits, chasing Tieding and junior southpaw Timmy Manning. The ASU bullpen quieted the Lopes over the next couple of innings, but GCU added two more in the bottom of the seventh, requiring the offense to make its seven-run comeback.
With the best of the best in the Pac-12 still ahead on ASU’s schedule, the Sun Devils are hoping for slightly more consistency. Even though they needed a nine-run inning to pull it off, ASU will head to Seattle to take on Washington with its shiny No. 24 ranking still attached to their name, hoping to see the team in the eighth and ninth inning and not the first seven.
“It’s what we talked to them about afterward,” Bloomquist said. “You can see what happens when you don’t show up to play, and you can see what happens when you do show up to play. It shouldn’t take you six innings for them to wake you up and for you to get going. Hopefully, we can get in the habit of coming out in the first inning and playing well.”
