SAN DIEGO, Calif. --- UC Irvine baseball held off San Diego State late to take another Tuesday night matchup with them, 3-2, at Tony Gwynn Stadium.

FAST AND FURIOUS
A slow start to the game saw scoreless baseball after two innings. UCI (5-3) started the third inning in flying fashion with a double to the left field corner by Taishi Nakawake. A few pitches later, he come home on the first career double by Woody Hadeen for a 1-0 lead. Nathan Church doubled up both of them mashing a home run on the first pitch to right field for a 3-0 lead.

ARMED AND DANGEROUS
From that point, the pitchers took over. After San Diego State (3-6) starter Hunter Cranton was lifted following the third inning, the Aztecs went on a tear getting hitless ball over the final six innings with two innings each from Ricky Tibbett, Jonny Guzman, and Robert Brodell.

The Anteaters were led by Cameron Wheeler once again. Michael Stanford pitched well as the starter through two innings, but ran into trouble loading the bases in the third. Wheeler came in and shut the threat down striking out both Aztec hitters, and would continue the momentum with three shutout innings on the evening.

DOWN TO THE WIRE
The 3-0 lead stood up for a while, but the Aztecs did find a few runs starting in the seventh inning. A hit by pitch to leadoff hitter Caden Miller put him on and moved into scoring position on a wild pitch. Poncho Ruiz punched a two-out single through the right side to make it a 3-1 ballgame.

The Aztecs put up a real threat in the ninth inning as well against 'Eater closer Jacob King. With one out, a dribbler up the first base line was booted by Ben Fitzgerald putting a runner on base. Suddenly, SDSU flipped a pair of bloop singles over the infield scoring a run and putting two on with just one out in a one-run game. King made the big pitch as Ruiz stepped up again, but bounced into a game-ending double play.

FINAL SCORE: UC IRVINE 3, SAN DIEGO STATE 2
Anteater pitchers weren't perfect, but were effective and made big pitches when they needed to. Wheeler snagged the win, his second in a week, from three scoreless innings. Stanford also threw scoreless ball from 2.1 innings, and Troy Wentworth and Jake Spillane also pitched scoreless baseball. King earned his third save of the season allowing just an unearned run.

UCI placed its four hits well getting one in the first and sticking three together in the third for their three runs on the night. Church's home run was his first of the season and fourth for the team. Hadeen had a run, RBI, and stolen base on his evening. Anteater freshmen Dub Gleed and Myles Smith got their first career starts on the evening as well.

UCI is on to Corvallis now to start a three game series Friday, March 5. The Anteaters and No. 13 Oregon State get going at 5:35 p.m. Friday followed by a pair of day games looking to hand the Beavers their first loss of 2022.

Thoughts from Head Coach Ben Orloff
"We're happy to win. That was hard. Without us playing good enough offense these past few games, we've had to play in these tight games. It would be nice to not, but we've pitched really well as a whole. We made three errors which is not good. We also made some big time defensive-plays from Taishi, the double play at the end of the game, Bam's block - we did some really good things defensively to hold on."

"We used six different guys and gave up two runs. Wheeler two weeks in a row against these guys was really good, and gave us a chance to the game. We didn't have Ingebritson tonight so we needed all of those guys tonight to pitch."