IRVINE, Calif. --- Anteater baseball held firm Sunday afternoon clinging to a one-run lead and finishing off a 5-4 victory to claim the series over the Washington Huskies in Anteater Ballpark.

PITCHING IMPACT
The starting pitchers were the toast of the day early with Peter Van Loon and Logan Gerling going toe-to-to and shutting down the offenses through two innings. Van Loon would keep that going for six innings allowing just three hits and two walks to go with a career high eight strikeouts. He rode his momentum of seven shutouts innings against Washington (0-2) last year in a win in Seattle. Gerling was good, but left after five innings trailing, 2-0, without issuing a walk and K-ing six.

RUN SUPPORT
The Anteater bats arrived first and stayed a bit starting with a two-run third inning. Nathan Church boomed a double to center field scoring Mike Peabody. Then a two-out single from Jake Cosgrove brought home Adrian Damla.

The lead grew in the sixth inning as the 'Eaters got a pair of runners on setting up Taishi Nakawake who laid down a safety squeeze to score Cosgrove and make it 3-0.

Some huge insurance runs came across in the seven inning as Jacob Castro poked a 2-out, 2-strike single to center field to score Damla and Church and put UCI (2-0) out to its biggest lead, 5-0.

HUNGRY HUSKIES
Washington was finally able to produce some offense in the eighth inning. After the side struck out to John Vergara in the seventh, they rattled him by getting the first two runners on base by a walk and hit by pitch. Josh Ibarra entered and did not supply much relief to start putting another runner on.

UW scored a pair of runs on a groundout and flyout, but then kept coming with two outs with a Christian Jones double scoring a third and error on a groundball by Dalton Chandler adding a fourth. Ibarra got a lazy fly ball to end the threat with UCI still  on top, 5-4.

The Huskies were at in again in the ninth getting a runner in scoring position, but Ibarra induced a ground ball to Connor McGuire who made a tough short-hop on the backhand and threw across the diamond to finsh the game.

FINAL: UC IRVINE 5, WASHINGTON 4
The score mirrored yesterday's win for UCI as they take the opening series against Washington for the second time in three years at home under head coach Ben Orloff. It also marks the 350th win in Anteater Ballpark since it opened in 2002.

The win also came on radio broadcaster Mark Roberts' birthday. The team is now 9-4 on this date since he joined the program and 4-1 in home games. UCI took hold of the overall series lead with the Huskies now at 16-14 all-time.

The win goes to Van Loon who has now won his last three starts. Josh Ibarra has saved the last two games he's appeared in earning today's after two innings and no walks or strikeouts.

Castro led the offense with two RBIs. Damla added three hits and two runs scored. Cosgrove had a spotless afternoon going 2-for-2 with a double, RBI, and run scored.

The Huskies had just five hits on the day. Jones was the only player with a hit, run, and RBI. Eleven Huskies struck out following the 13 that went down on Saturday. Logan Gerling picked up the loss despite six of the team's seven strikeouts among six pitchers.

Head Coach Ben Orloff's Thoughts
"Van Loon has been great. That sixth inning he got a little tired, that's the longest he's gone. Ever since we've come back from our break, he's been the one guy on the roster that's made the biggest strides from where he was at last year to now. That's really saying something because he was off to a great start last year. He was really good today and we're going to see a lot of that throughout the year."

"McGuire made a big-time play in a big-time spot. He and Taishi can do that. There's not many places in the country that has a better defensive left side of the infield than us."

"Ibarra and Vergara were doing that last year. First outing of the year is always tough. Vergara was really good in the seventh, then a long inning sitting down, and then we don't want to start an inning walk-hit batter-hit batter. But when we've got the lead with those two guys after six, the game will be over."

"Cosgrove has been doing this for a couple weeks now, ever since we've been back. He's very competitive, he works hard, he wants to perform and succeed. There's no fear. It's good to see him play well. We need him, and he's been huge these last two days and why we've won."

SERIES FINALE
The teams finish up their three-game series Monday, Feb. 22, at 1:00 p.m. on Bigwest.TV and kuci.org. Left-hander Nick Pinto will go for the 'Eaters opposed by fourth-year, Jack Enger.