Baseball team comes up short at OCC
Mar 30, 2008
The Irvine Valley baseball team nearly made a dramatic comeback last Thursday, but fell short, 7-6, in an Orange Empire Conference game at Orange Coast.
The Pirates jumped out to a 7-3 lead, then hung on as the Lasers rallied late.
Irvine Valley fell into third place in the conference standings. Orange Coast and Santa Ana remained tied for first place.
With the game tied at 3 in the bottom of the fifth, OCC (22-7-1, 6-1) took the lead for good.
Ryan Sheeks doubled to lead things off. He went to third on a sacrifice bunt by Chris Fung and scored on an RBI grounder by Wes Kartch to make it 4-3. Cory Olson followed that up with a solo home run to left to make it 5-3.
OCC added a run in the sixth to go up, 7-3.
But the Lasers (21-9, 5-2) refused to give up.
In the bottom of the eight, IVC took advantage of a single, a pair of walks and a two-run bloop double by Matt Ivanoff to cut the deficit to 7-5.
A walk by Kory Burkhart loaded the bases, bringing IVC's leading hitter, Abel Medina, to the plate.
But Medina struck out against OCC reliever Justin Peterson and the game stayed at 7-5.
A leadoff walk in the top of the ninth by Connor Rhoads turned into a run as Sean Williams lined a two-out single to right to make it 7-6, but Peterson managed to ring up Vince Hungerford on a called third strike to end the game.
Ivanoff led the Lasers, going 2 for 5 at the plate with three RBI. Williams was 2 for 5 with an RBI, Hungerford went 2 for 4 with two runs scored and Alex Agortsas went 2 for 5.
IVC starting pitcher Robert Pupura took the loss. he went 5 1/3 innings and gave up six runs on seven his with a walk and a strikeout.
Jared Haller pitched 2 2/3 innings in relief, allowing one run on two hits with a walk and a strikeout.
The Lasers return to action today, playing at Cypress at 2:30 p.m. The Lasers host Cypress on Thursday at 2:30 p.m.