Cal Sports Report

Cal Blasts Its Way into Pac-12 Baseball Tournament

Bears hit six homers in their win over Washington, clinching the final berth in the conference tournament
Jake Curtis|
Cal Blasts Its Way into Pac-12 Baseball Tournament
Cal Blasts Its Way into Pac-12 Baseball Tournament

 Cal used the long ball to clinch a berth in the Pac-12 baseball tournament.

The Bears hit five home runs in Friday’s 12-7 victory over Washington, ending the Huskies’ seven-game winning streak, then added six homers on Saturday in a 16-11 win at Washington that clinched the ninth and final berth in the conference tournament for Cal.

The Pac-12 tournament starts Tuesday in Scottsdale, Ariz., and features three, three-team pools. Each team will play the two other teams in its pool, and the three pool winners as well as a wild-card team with advance to the single-elimination semifinals. Cal’s three-team pool will include top-seeded Stanford and sixth-seeded Oregon. Cal went 1-2 against Oregon this season and was 1-3 against Stanford, although the one win against the Cardinal, which came back in February, was a nonconference contest.

Entering Saturday’s action, Cal (24-26, 12-18) needed either a victory over Washington or a Washington State loss to Stanford to earn the final Pac-12 tournament berth. Cal ended up getting both, but a few minutes before Stanford finished off WSU 15-5, Cal finished off Washington, with a nine-run sixth inning being the key factor.

Cal trailed 4-2 entering the sixth, but Caleb Lomavita, who had two home runs on Friday, led off the sixth with the first of his two home runs on Saturday. Cal eventually went ahead 5-4 on Dom Souto’s RBI single later in the sixth, and Jack Johnston made it an 8-4 game with a three-run homer. Rodney Green Jr. added another three-run homer to complete the nine-run inning, making it an 11-4 game.

Cal added three more homers in the seventh, with Nathan Manning, Carson Crawford and Lomavita smacking round-trippers to make it 15-6. For Carson it was his third homer in two days, and for Lomavita it was his fourth homer in two days and his 15th of the season.

Despite hitting six homers in a span of two innings, the Bears fell two homers short of the school record for home runs in a game.

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Jake Curtis
JAKE CURTIS

Jake Curtis worked in the San Francisco Chronicle sports department for 27 years, covering virtually every sport, including numerous Final Fours, several college football national championship games, an NBA Finals, world championship boxing matches and a World Cup. He was a Cal beat writer for many of those years, and won awards for his feature stories.

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