Box Score

SALEM, Ore. – For the second time this season, Pacific played a game to a rare deadlock the Boxers tying 6-6 with Willamette Tuesday in a non-conference baseball game at John Lewis Field.

The Boxers (21-12-2) came back from a 6-3 deficit by scoring three runs in the eighth inning, plating the tying run on a squeeze bunt by Sam Kaplan (Fr., Salt Lake City, Utah). The Boxers left two runners in scoring position in the ninth and neither team out runners on base in the extra innings. The game was called after the 11th inning due to darkness as John Lewis Field is not lighted.

Pacific had now played in two tie games this season after having not played in one since the 1965 season. The Boxers also played Menlo to a 9-9, 11-inning tie on Mar. 27. That game was shorted to allow the Boxers to catch their flight home from the Bay Area.

Therone Bridges (Fr., Vancouver, Wash.) led Pacific offensively in his first collegiate start, going 2 for 6 with a double and two runs batted in. Three other players each had a hit. Doug Bloom, Tyson Giza, T.C. Lee and Tosh Semlacher each had two hits to lead Willamette (18-14-1).

Willamette scored the first run of the game in the third inning off of Pacific starter Mike McGuire (Jr., Olympia, Wash.) when Bloom doubled to left field and came home on a ground out. The Boxers tallied three in the fifth inning when Anson Arakaki (So., Hilo, Hawaii) walked with the bases loaded to score Michael Arakaki (So., Mililani, Hawaii). Bridges followed with a two-run double that scored Kaplan and Greg Tellez (Jr., White Salmon, Wash.).

The Bearcats rebounded to take the lead back with a four-run sixth littered with Pacific miscues. After Willamette led off with two hits, Giza opened scoring when Jayson Fukumoto (Jr., Mililani, Hawaii) was called for a balk. Semlacher followed with a single up the middle to score Lee, but a pair of Pacific errors on the play allowed Max Stepan to score and Semlacher to advance to third. Alex Lavery followed with a sacrifice fly that scored Semlacher.

Willamette made it a 6-3 game in the seventh Giza singled through the right side with two outs and scored when Lee reached on a Pacific fielding error, one of six committed by the Boxers.

Justin Liu (Fr., Spokane, Wash.) and Jared Van Hoon (Jr., Lake Oswego, Ore.) opened the Pacific eighth with doubles, with Liu scoring on Tellez's sacrifice fly. Van Hoon scored on Willamette's lone error of the day before Kaplan laid down the squeeze bunt that scored Grant Gabriel (Fr., Honolulu, Hawaii) to tie things at 6-6.

Nate Rasmussen (Jr., Sandy, Utah) doubled with one out in the ninth to give Pacific a bid for the win. He advanced to third on a double steal before Willamette reliever Parker Johnson coaxed Tellez into a ground out to close out the inning. Neither team would put runners on in the 10th or 11th.

McGuire was one of five Pacific pitchers to enter the game. In the start he allowed one run on three hits with one strikeout in three innings. Willamette starter Jamie McCaffrey went 4.2 innings, allowing three runs on two hits and two walks with six strikeouts.

Pacific will play their final non-conference game of the year on Wednesday, facing Concordia (Ore.) at 4 p.m. at the University of Portland's Joe Etzel Field.