LONG BEACH, Calif. --- UC Irvine baseball avoided the sweep at the hands of rivals Long Beach State with a 2-1 win Sunday at Blair Field.

MORE OF THE SAME
The theme for the entire weekend held firm into Sunday with starters Cameron Wheeler and Marques Johnson commanding the spotlight on the mound. The duo each got help from double play balls in the first inning to keep things scoreless, and continued to limit any scoring opportunities early.

LBSU (17-25, 7-11) took the early lead in the third inning from a Rocco Peppi two-out RBI single, but Nathan Church held that run-scoring play to one run throwing out the trail runner at the plate to end the inning. For Wheeler, that was the only run he let up, and it turned out to be unearned as he would finish up retiring the final six hitters he would face, issue zero walks, and tie a career high with four strikeouts on the afternoon.

Johnson silenced the Anteater hitters pretty well as well striking out 10 in his six innings of work exiting in a tie ballgame.

RUNS APLENTY
UC Irvine (24-17, 10-8) had struggled with the bats all weekend with a total of six hits in the first two games and neither of their two runs driven in with a hit. As the fourth inning rolled around, the 'Eaters were devoid of a hit on Sunday before a one-out single by Dub Gleed. Justin Torres followed with a single on the next pitch and suddenly UCI had their first inning of the series with multiple hits. Now with two outs and runners still on the corners, Abraham Garcia-Pacheco came through with a third hit in the inning lifting a liner into right-center to bring a run home and tie things up at 1-1.

The score stood until the seventh inning with Johnson finally out of the game for the Dirtbags. Caden Kendle greeted reliever Jake Rons rudely with a double into the left field corner. After a sacrifice bunt, it was up to Taishi Nakawake with the infield drawn in, and his end-of-the-bat hit flipped over the first baseman right where he would normally play and just enough to bring home Kendle and give the 'Eaters the lead, 2-1.

FINAL SCORE: UC IRVINE 2, LONG BEACH STATE 1
The Anteater pitching was a little bit better this time around as Wheeler, Troy Taylor, and Gordon Ingebritson would stifle the Dirtbags retiring 18 of the last 20 hitters to preserve the lead. Taylor, pitching against his freshman school, earned the win for his second on the season setting down all six hitters he faced with two strikeouts. Ingebritson bounced back from a rough Friday outing to shutdown Long Beach State in the final two innings to score his second save. In the process, he snapped his string of hitters without a walk that finished at 96 in a row.

The offense still finished with just six hits, but enough for the win behind Garcia-Pacheco's two hits game. He and Nakawake provided RBIs with Taishi posting three of the team's 12 hits on the weekend. Dub Gleed made up for his error and unearned run let up to score the 'Eaters' first run as well.

UCI does drop the series and now has some major work to do to get back in the race for the conference title as well as an NCAA at-large berth. The 'Eaters sit at 24-17 overall with a 10-8 Big West mark as they head back to Anteater Ballpark for a Tuesday night matchup with San Diego followed by a weekend series with UC Santa Barbara.

Postgame Thoughts from head coach Ben Orloff
"Cam pitched really good. And when you get good starts the day before, the bullpen is fresh, and we're going to be aggressive like with Troy Taylor. We pitched it and played defense as a whole well to win a 2-1 game because runs were hard to come by all weekend. LBSU can really pitch. It's tough to score runs here, so this was going to be a close, low-scoring game, and we pitched and defended good enough to win 2-1."

"Those guys - Bam, Taishi, and Kendle - really had good games offesnively and again, in games like this you have to be opportunistic and play offense; get a hit-and-run in play, get a bunt in play, driving the guy in from third with less than two outs, and when we had those opportunities, we cashed out and that's the difference in the game."

"It was good to see Troy pitch well. You'd be naive to say there was no emotion going into it, but I don't think Troy has any chip on his shoulder like that, he's trying to pitch well, he's a competitor, and in that spot, we were tied, top of their lineup coming up, and we wanted to go to our best guy, and that zero he got in the sixth was kind of the difference in the game. We play from ahead and pitched it good with him and Gordon."