After a regular season of nothing but three-game sweeps of its conference opponents, the Grand Canyon University Club Baseball Division 1 team couldn't duplicate the feat at the National Club Baseball Association's Southern Pacific Regional Tournament, losing back-to-back games Saturday in San Luis Obispo, California. After winning their opening-round game Friday, the top-seeded Lopes fell to 3^rd-seeded California Polytechnic University, 9-4, Saturday morning, then lost to 2^nd-seeded University of California-Davis, 13-6, six hours later to be knocked out of the double-elimination tournament.
 
Semifinal Round: #3 Cal Poly 9, #1 GCU 4
 
Cal Poly – who entered the tournament seeded 3^rd after winding up the 2022 NCBA World Series runnerup – showed how they got there a year ago. After dominating UC-Davis Friday in their tournament opener and posting hits in seven of their nine innings against the Lopes Saturday morning, it was more the Lopes' own miscues that led to GCU's undoing. A Mustangs' fielding error, an RBI double by GCU shortstop Santiago Zuniga, a walk to Brady Steenson and a bases-clearing double by Bryce Arana gave the Lopes a 3-1 lead after three innings. The Lopes gave up the lead quickly after CPU got to Lopes' starting pitcher Sam Ott in the 4^th with a single and a triple, then used two Lopes' errors on one play to score an unearned run to tie it at 3-3. GCU got the lead back in the 6^th – thanks to a Rhys Davis double, Nathan Kaszynski single and Zuniga sacrifice fly to plate Davis. Once again, though, the lead was short-lived, and again due to Lopes' miscues. In the 7^th, a tiring Ott walked the first man he saw, but then two misplayed fly balls and two Mustangs' singles handed CPU four unearned runs and the lead for good. The Mustangs plated two more unearned runs in the 9^th to finish things off. Ott was tagged with the loss, but five of the seven runs he allowed over his seven innings of work were unearned. Two hits each for Arana, Davis and Braeden Coloma were wasted in the loss.
 
Elimination Round: #2 UC Davis 13, #1 GCU 6
 
While the Lopes entered the second elimination game of the day's action seemingly poised to avoid the same pratfalls as the morning game, too much déjà vu helped UC Davis take control of the game early. An unearned run in the top of the 2^nd inning gave the Aggies a 1-0 lead, but the Lopes matched it in the bottom half on two walks, a fielder's choice and a wild pitch. From there, though, it was all UCD, who scored at least one run in each of the next four innings – including the 4^th, when the Aggies sent 12 men to the plate and scored eight runs. The Lopes were in danger of being mercy-ruled in the 7^th inning before showing one last bit of the fight that won them a SoPac South title a month ago by scoring four runs in the frame – thanks to an RBI single by Arana and a bases-loaded double from Ott.
 
"I told the guys that every time we come to regionals, it's a different ball game, and we had some freshmen and sophomores that got a full dose of that," said Lopes' Head Coach Rich Warnol. "It's probably one of the hardest regionals across the country to get out of. It was strange this weekend because we did dominate offensively all season, and I thought we had a really good shot to compete at a better level than we did here. Ultimately, we had some hitters that were overmatched, and some pitchers knocked around more than we expected, and we just couldn't figure it out today."
The Lopes bring the curtain down on a historic season that saw them finish with a perfect 15-0 record in SoPac South Conference play for the first time ever, and with a final overall record of 22-8. Fortunately, the program's quest for a national championship doesn't end here, since the Lopes' D2 Club Baseball team won the D2 Pacific Region Tournament a week ago, and will open up play at the NCBA D2 World Series in Alton, Illinois, this Friday, May 19.