KANEOHE, Hawaii --- The theme of this road trip through Hawaii has been the indescribable amount of stress put onto Biola's pitching a defense. That theme held strong once again today as Biola gutted out a 1-0 victory over Hawaii Pacific in 10 pressure-packed innings.
The Eagles improved to 6-1 to begin their Hawaiian road trip, getting the one-run win in a three-hour+ game one on Friday. Because of a delayed start time and the length of the game, game two was postponed with plans to make the second game up on Saturday. Time and location TBA.
Paige Austin was the one in the circle for all 10 of those innings for Biola. The junior righty picked up her 10
th win of the season by going the distance, throwing 166 pitches and working her way out of jams seemingly in every inning.
The Eagles won the game by executing small ball perfectly when the game went into the international tiebreaker rule in the 10
th inning.
Tori Apodaca began the inning on second base, per the tiebreaker rule. A
Rilee Ruvalcaba bunt pushed Apodaca to third base. Then, with one out
Kiana Meriales hit the ball high in the air the other way to set up a sacrifice fly chance to bring Apodaca home from third base.
The play at the place was close, but not nearly the closest of the game. That belongs to an HPU runner in the bottom of the ninth and also
Ari Gonzales in the top half of the fifth inning.
HPU managed to get runners on first and second with two away in their half of the ninth and the no. 2 batter in their lineup coming up. That number two hitter, Sierra Dias, came up with a single into shallow center field that had a chance to win the game for HPU.
If there was anyone other than
Jennifer Morinishi patrolling the middle of the outfield for BU it very well may have given the Sharks the win. Instead, Morinishi scooped up the ground ball and casually fired a strike right into the waiting glove of
Kayla Neff for the final out of the inning at home plate.
It was a bummer for Dias, who thought she finally broke through in a big situation for her teammates. She had plenty of other opportunities to do so throughout the game, having three consecutive plate appearances with runners in scoring position. However, she could not figure a way to get to
Paige Austin and had stranded six of her teammates on base.
That plate appearance in the ninth probably never should have happened for Dias and the Sharks, since it seems like Biola scored a run to pull ahead in the game in their top of the fifth inning.
Ari Gonzales was waved home on what seemed like a
Kiana Meriales sac fly.
The throw beat Gonzales to the plate, but Biola's junior designated player lept in the air and executed an acrobatic flip over the tag to touch home plate with her left hand.
The home plate umpire ruled the catcher successfully tagged Gonzales' leg, and so the game remained scoreless until the other Meriales sacrifice fly in the 10
th.
Biola is fortunate to walk away with a shutout win in this one after HPU managed 15 base runners throughout the game via eight hits, four walks and three hit-by-pitches. But, whenever the Eagles needed a big strikeout or key defensive play to end an inning, they managed to find it.
Austin tipped up over 325 pitches over the last two days in her second-straight bulldog performance. She went 10 full innings of scoreless ball with five strikeouts. More than half of her strikeouts came with runners in scoring position or to end an inning. The 10 innings pitched is a new career-high for Austin.
Biola had six base hits in this game, all singles. The bottom few hitters in the lineup is where most of the action was with Meriales' "two" sacrifice flies and a breakout performance from Ruvalcaba. The freshman was never retired in this contest, going 2-for-2 and also reaching via a walk and hit a sacrifice bunt.
The win moves Biola to 15-3 overall and 10-1 in PacWest Conference play. Hawaii Pacific suffers a third excruciating loss in this series to fall under .500 at 11-11 (6-7 PacWest).
More information about if and when the fourth game of the series will be made up can be found at athletics.biola.edu on sometime Friday night or Saturday morning.
