SAN DIEGO--On Friday afternoon at America's Most Scenic Ballpark, the No. 4 nationally ranked Point Loma Sea Lions treated the UH Hilo Vulcans the same way that they have many other teams already this season.
The No. 1 team in the NCAA west region scored a lot of runs and used shutdown pitching to secure a doubleheader sweep of the Vulcans at Carroll B. Land Stadium, 17-0 and 4-0. Point Loma improved to 35-5 on the year and to a league-leading 17-5 in the Pacific West Conference. UH Hilo fell to 25-15 overall and to 13-13 in the PacWest.
Point Loma won their sixth and seventh straight games, while the Vulcans saw their five-game winning streak halted. The Vulcans aren't the first team Point Loma has shutout or scored double digit runs against. The 17-0 game was the 11th time this season that PLNU had scored 10 or more runs in a game, and the two shutout wins were their ninth and tenth this year.
In the opener, Baxter Halligan pitched five shutout innings to improve to a PacWest leading 9-2 on the season and his Sea Lion teammates bashed out 17 hits in the 17-0 win. Halligan also leads the conference with a microscopic 1.83 ERA. Today, the 6-foot-2 lefthander gave up just two hits and struck out eight Vulcans in his five innings of work.
Through three and a half innings, the hosts held a narrow 2-0 advantage but they pushed across nine runs in the fifth to salt the game away. In that inning, they sent 14 batters to the plate and had nine hits. When the nine innings were all said and done, Jack Malone led the Sea Lion offense with three hits, including a triple and home run, and drove in five runs. Eight different UHH pitchers took the mound. On offense, the Vulcans had just three hits, two of them by
Casey Yamauchi.
In the second game, Dylan Miller was the Sea Lion starter that mostly held off the Vulcans. But the visitors also had more chances than they did in game one. In the fifth, they had base hits from Josh Fuentes and Yamauchi, but a double play and a caught stealing ended that rally. In the top of the sixth, the Vulcans had two more base hits but suffered another thrown out base runner and a fielder's choice squashed the threat.
Christian DeJesus pitched well in a losing cause, giving the bullpen a break with seven solid innings. He allowed just four hits, three runs and walked five. He struck out four. Miller earned the victory for the Sea Lions, improving to 7-1 on the season with six shutout innings.
First game pitcher Halligan went to work at the plate for PLNU in the second game with an RBI-double in the fourth inning. In the fifth inning Otto Kemp singled, stole a base and two wild pitches later scored to make it 3-0. Halligan doubled again in the eighth and came home on Malone's two-bagger to add insurance.
Fuentes and Yamauchi had two hits each for the Vulcans, who had eight total in the nightcap.
The two squads will play another twinbill on Saturday, with first pitch scheduled for noon.
