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Cal Sports Report

Stanford Emphatically Ends Cal's Baseball Season

Cal's bid to reach the NCAA tournament squashed in a lopsided, first-round loss in ACC tournament
Jake Curtis|
Hideki Prather
Hideki Prather | Photo by Darrell Lavin, Cal Athletics

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California Golden Bears

Cal needed a couple of wins in the ACC tournament to have a chance to reach the NCAA baseball tournament for the first time since 2019, but the Bears did not come close to even getting the first win.

Stanford lost two of three games to Bears over the weekend, but the Cardinal routed Cal 11-4 on Tuesday in the first round of the single-elimination conference tournament in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The Bears (29-26, 12-18 ACC) had an RPI ranking of 55, a KPI ranking of 56 and a DSR ranking of 48 entering Tuesday's action, so Cal needed to do more this week to have a shot at one of the 35 at-large berths for the 64-team NCAA tournament field.

The fact that Cal's usual No. 3 hitter, Danny Murillo, did not play Tuesday because of an injury hurt the Bears' offense, but his absence was not the difference.

Stanford (28-25, 13-17 ACC) pounded out 11 hits, including two homers, and unlike the three-game series in Berkeley, the Cardinal got the hits when they counted. After going 1-for-26 with runners in scoring position in the three games over the weekend against Cal, Stanford got hits in seven of its first 10 opportunities with runners in scoring position on Tuesday.

Cal's No. 9 hitter, Gannon Snyder was 3-for-4 with two doubles, and Cal's Hideki Prather had two hits, including a home run. It was Prather's RBI single in the top of the third inning that gave the Bears a 1-0 lead. However, those were the only Cal highlights.

Cal starter Otto Espinoza did a solid job, allowing just one hit in his 3 1/3 innings, but that one hit was a Jimmy Nati home run that tied the score 1-1 in the bottom of the third. And Espinoza issued two walks in the fourth inning that led to two Stanford runs and a 3-1 Cardinal lead.

But it was the fifth inning that took Cal out of the game.

Trailing by two, the Bears had runners at second and third with no one out and the top of the Cal lineup coming up. But Stanford's Aiden Keenan struck out Prather, Jett Kenady and Cade Campbell in succession to end the threat and maintain Stanford's two-game lead.

In the bottom of the fifth, Stanford's Charlie Bates belted a three-run home run off Cade Colombara to make it a 6-1 lead for Stanford.

The Cardinal added four runs in the sixth to make it 10-1, and it was 11-2 entering the ninth inning.

Cal's Ethan Kodama made the final score closer with a two-run homer in the top of the ninth, and that forced Stanford to use its sixth pitcher of the game. But it did not prevent Stanford from ending Cal's season.

NOTES

The Cal and Stanford teams took the same commercial flight to Charlotte after the completion of their three-game series.

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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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