An annual Saturday night season-ender… no more.
 
Needing a win to stave off elimination from the National Club Baseball Association's Southern Pacific Regional Tournament Saturday in San Luis Obispo, California, the Grand Canyon University Club Baseball team got a pitching performance for the ages from Sam Ott in a 4-2 win over 2^nd-seeded California Polytechnic University. The win eliminated defending region champion CPU from the tournament, and sent the Lopes (17-12 overall, 12-3 SoPac South) to a championship-round showdown against 4^th-seeded University of California-Santa Barbara, who sent GCU to the elimination round with an 11-8 semifinal win over the Lopes Saturday morning. The win was also the first time in the last three years that GCU advanced past the Saturday elimination semifinal round of the tournament.
 
Semifinals (Saturday morning): #4 UC Santa Barbara 11, #3 GCU 8
 
Entering the four-team tournament as the No. 3 seed, the Lopes were pleasantly surprised to be the home team in the semifinal matchup against the lower-seeded Gauchos, but that happiness didn't last long. GCU's offense got rolling immediately as Santiago Zuniga and Kyo Ohsato opened the game with back-to-back hits, and Zuniga came home two batters later to give the Lopes a 1-0 lead. It proved to be their only lead, since the Gauchos jumped on Lopes' starting pitcher Connor Bates in the 3^rd, putting the first six hitters on base and scoring five runs to take the lead. The Lopes responded in the bottom of the frame with three runs to cut the deficit to a run, but despite having numerous chances to tie or take the lead later on, they never got over the hump. The Lopes' best chance to come from behind came in the 6^th when they sent eight men to the plate and scored twice, but left the bases loaded (including the go-ahead run). Meanwhile, the Gauchos scored in five different innings off four different Lopes' pitchers. Zuniga led the Lopes' offensive charge, going 2-for-6 with three stolen bases, two runs scored and a run batted in.
 
Elimination Semifinals (Saturday night): #3 GCU 4, #2 Cal Poly 2
 
The loss put the Lopes back in an extremely tenuous spot – back in a tournament round that had swallowed them up in 2022 and 2023, and with a suddenly depleted pitching staff.
 
Enter Ott to face not only the 2^nd-seeded team in the tournament, but a Cal Poly team ranked 2^nd in the country, and bent on revenge after losing to the Lopes Friday night in the 1^st round in front of their home crowd. Throw in the fact that the Lopes' junior began to feel ill soon after first pitch. However, no one in the stands had any idea Ott was ailing from how he threw Saturday night. The Lopes first gave him a 4-0 lead, thanks to a Rhys Davis' 2-RBI single in the 2^nd, and Zuniga and Ohsato scoring two more in the 3^rd. Ott allowed a solo homer from Cal Poly's Tyler Meehleis in the 3^rd, then another run in the 6^th that might have given CPU hope that he was wearing down. No chance. Even though CPU starting pitcher Ben Christensen allowed just one Lopes' hit after the 3^rd inning and went the nine-inning distance, he couldn't match Ott's performance.
 

The Mustangs brought the tying run to the plate in both the 7^th and 8^th innings, but Ott and his defense – especially Zuniga, who recorded six outs himself over the final 3 2/3 innings – wouldn't let them get into scoring position. Ott crossed the 100-pitch plateau in the 8^th, and even needed Lopes' Head Coach Rich Warnol to bring him water in a visit to the mound to keep him going, yet didn't allow any of the final four CPU hitters to hit the ball out of the infield in finishing off the 114-pitch, complete-game gem. Ott scattered seven hits and two earned runs while striking out five over nine innings in helping the Lopes advance.
 





The road to GCU's first trip to the NCBA D1 World Series since 2019 still goes uphill, since in the tournament's double-elimination format, the Lopes have to knock off undefeated UCSB twice in a row to win the region title. The first championship game is scheduled for 9AM Sunday, with the 'winner-take-all' Game 2 scheduled for noon if the Lopes win Game 1.