MONMOUTH, Ore. - The hitting woes for the Lewis-Clark State College baseball team extended a day as the Warriors were shutout for the third straight time by Western Oregon University pitchers, this time 12-0 on Sunday.
LCSC, which lost a doubleheader to WOU 1-0 and 2-0 on Saturday, has gone scoreless in 25 straight innings to drop to 21-10 on the season WOU, an NCAA Division II team, improves to 19-11.
The Warriors, who collected 13 hits in Friday's 10-1 win to open the series, had just 10 hits in the final three games, including three on Sunday. Of those 10 hits, nine were singles.
Kirk Lind was the latest WOU pitcher to tame the Warrior bats. He went seven innings and allowed the three hits, but struck out seven. Travis Shigeta and Brad Carter each pitched one inning in relief. LCSC only had one player reach as far as third base and that came in the third inning when Michael Bush doubled and advanced to third on a ground out. But a fly out ended the Warrior threat.
Western Oregon wasted little time on Sunday in establishing control with five runs in the first inning and two in the second. By the time the seventh run scored, the Warriors were on their third pitcher.
Tyler Barrett suffered his first loss of the season to fall to 5-1 and he lasted only one-third of an inning after he allowed five hits and hit a batter. The big blow was a three-run double by Michael Chiarelli. After an RBI single by Griffin Boyd, Barrett was replaced by Alex Murrieta, who got the next two batters out to get out of the first inning.
However, in the second, Murrieta gave up two singles, a walk, and hit a batter to force in a run, He was replaced by George Sanchez, who allowed an RBI sacrifice fly.
The Wolves later would strike for two runs in the fifth and three in the sixth for the 12-0 margin, LCSC's most lopsided loss this season and also the program's biggest shutout loss since a 14-0 setback to Washington State during the 1974 season.
LCSC wound up using six pitchers in the game with Sanchez (three hits over three innings) and Zach Arneson (one hit and four strikeouts over 2.1 innings) being the most effective. In all, LCSC allowed 17 hits and all 12 runs were earned, which caused the team earned run average to go from 2.29 to 2.62 on the season.
Along with Bush, Brian Gaylord and Cody Weiss each had a single. During the last three games, Braxton Miller is the lone Warrior with more than one hit.
With Sunday's loss, the Warriors set some not-so-pleasant marks. This is the first time since at least 1971 that LCSC lost three consecutive games by shutouts (records are incomplete prior to '71). The last time LCSC was shut out three times in a season was 1985.
WOU's win was the fourth over LCSC this season (WOU beat the Warriors 5-2 in a tournament in Lewiston in February). The last time LC lost to a team four times in one season was 1989 when both College of Idaho and WSU defeated the Warriors.
LCSC will try to bounce back this weekend against the University of British Columbia when the Thunderbirds come to Lewiston. The new schedule has the two teams meeting in a doubleheader on Friday at 3 p.m., a doubleheader on Saturday at 1 p.m., and a single game Sunday, also at 1 p.m. Friday's extra game is a make-up contest from when the two teams had a game rained out in Vancouver, British Columbia earlier this season.
