Tulane Green Wave Baseball Outlasts Long Beach State to Split Road Trip

The Tulane Green Wave baseball team managed to a split on their four-game road trip to California, which wrapped up on Monday.

The Tulane Green Wave baseball program gathers in prayer moments before it takes the diamond. | Tulane Athletics

The Tulane Green Wave baseball team had to hold off a furious rally by Long Beach State to wrap up its four-game California road trip with a 3-2 win on Monday.

The Green Wave (9-3) are back on a two-game winning streak after losing their first two games over the weekend at Pepperdine. Tulane won the finale against the Waves, 7-4, on Sunday, before moving on to a single game against Long Beach State.

For eight innings, the Tulane pitching staff shut Long Beach State down and built a 3-0 lead. In the ninth, with Carter Benbrook on the bump to close it out, the Green Wave got in a spot of trouble.

Benbrook gave up two hits to start the inning and then hit a batter. Then, Luke Taylor singled and drove in two runs to force the Green Wave to bring in Tayler Montiel to record the first out of the inning. After that, Tulane brought in Michael Lombardi to try and close the game.

Even after allowing a runner to advance on a wild pitch, Lombardi retired the next two hitters on strikeouts to record his third save of the season and his second in as many games.

Tulane starter J.D. Rodriguez (1-0) threw four innings of no-hit baseball before he allowed his only hit in the fifth inning. He struck out four and walked none. Blaise Wilcenski pitched three great innings of relief, giving up two hits and striking out two.

The Green Wave took the lead early, scoring a run in the top of the first. Kaikea Harrison drove in a run on a double, which scored Tanner Chun.

In the fourth, Gavin Schulz gave the Green Wave a 2-0 lead after he scored on an RBI single by Nate Johnson.

The Green Wave added a run in the eighth that turned out to be more important than Tulane realized at the time. James Ababedis singled to drive in Harrison to make it 3-0.

Schulz was the only Green Wave hitter with at least two hits, as he went 2-for-3 with a double.

The Green Wave spent the entire weekend in California, losing their first two games to Pepperdine on Friday and Saturday, both by a score of 2-1. Tulane lost the first game on a walk-off single by Pepperdine’s Joe Cardinale.

Tulane returns home later this week to prepare for a three-game series with North Dakota State that starts on Friday.