College baseball playoffs: Seven-run ninth inning sinks CSUMB
SEASIDE — Regular season results don’t hold a lot of weight in the postseason. Any edge Cal State Monterey Bay felt it had Friday evaporated into the wind.
The Otters backs are up against the wall after Northwest Nazarene erupted for seven runs in the ninth inning to turn a five-run deficit into a wild 14-12 win in the NCAA Division II West Regionals at CSUMB.
As a result, the defending West Regional champion Otters will have to beat reigning Super Regional champion Northwest Nazarene twice on Saturday to extend what had been a record breaking regular season run.
It’s not a situation CSUMB – at least its coaching staff — isn’t familiar with, having dropped the second game of the West Regionals in 2024 in 2025, only to bounce back and win the next two games to advance to the Super Regionals.
“The longer I sat there and thought about it, the more optimistic I felt,” CSUMB coach What White said. “We’ve been a great club in bouncing back all year. Let it hurt overnight, and lets come out with focus on Saturday.”
During the regular season, in which CSUMB won 36 games, it took three of four games from the Blackhawks, who swept them last year in the Super Regionals to advance to World Series.
Since capturing a California Collegiate Athletic Association record fifth straight conference title, the Otters have struggled to regain their form, having dropped five of their last six games.
“I can’t put a reason or why,” White said. “Now we’re in a position where we need to take care of business. Can we settle our nerves and play baseball? It starts with pitching. How will we look in the first few innings?”
White will throw Hayden Hall, who went 7-3 on the season with 58 strikeouts in 56 innings of work on Saturday. Hall hasn’t pitched in a game since May 1.
A common theme in their last five games is the Otters have led in each game, jumping out on opponents, only to find themselves trailing in the later innings.
If White is looking for positives, CSUMB avenged one of its losses on Thursday when it rallied for a 10-7 win over conference rival San Marcos to end their season.
“All I know is the teams that are still playing in both regionals, we all owe them something,” White said. “All the teams that are still alive have knocked us out of the postseason in the last four years.”
Still, this setback might sting a little more as the Otters went into the top of the ninth with what seemed like a commanding five-run lead, having tagged Northwest Nazarene’s ace for nine runs in the first five innings.
With Northwest Nazarene (39-16) clinging to life-support with two outs, a triple cleared the bases before a homer three hitters later accounted for three more runs.
“The vibe wasn’t great after the game,” White said. “There are a lot of guys who felt we let this slip through our fingers. It hurts, and it should hurt. The idea is to wake up tomorrow and be excited to have an opportunity to play again.”
The Otters did put the tying runs on base in the bottom of the ninth before Gavin Brubaker induced a force out to end the three-plus hour marathon.
“We played really well for eight innings,” White said. “We were one strike from ending it. It just got away in the end. But in looking back, I felt good about the moves we made. We were not perfect. Sometimes you have to be in certain situations.”
Take away the 5.1 hitless innings of relief that Kyle Giovannoni threw in Thursday’s win, and CSUMB has gone through a collective slump on the mound, having given up 62 runs in its last seven games.
Facing arguably the top pitcher in the West Region in an 11-0 Corbin Talley, the Otters tagged the hard-throwing left-hander for nine runs over 4.1 innings, lifting balls into the wind that sailed out of the yard.
For the second straight game, Connor Smith and Nikc Maestas homered, while James Starkus and Jason Del Villar also sent shots into orbit as the Otters scored four runs in the first and fifth innings.
Tacking on three in the seventh inning on run-scoring singles from Smith and Maestas staked CSUMB to a six-run cushion, only to see the lead vanish in the wind, where gusts were over 25 mph at times at the Otter Complex.
The Otters out-hit Northwest Nazarene 18-13 and out homered them 4-2, but also struck out 10 times and left 10 runners stranded on the base paths.
“We built innings,” White said. “We had guys on base all day long. We put pressure on them. I felt like we played really well. But everything adds up. Nazarene is very similar to us. We hope Saturday is a long day.”
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