MONMOUTH, Ore. – Northwest Nazarene baseball fell to Western Oregon 4-1 in their second game of the GNAC Championships on Friday, but will still be in contention for the title on Saturday.
With the loss, all three teams in the tournament are now 1-1. By GNAC rule, the 2-seed Western Oregon and 3-seed Montana State Billings will now play each other at noon on Saturday. As the top seed, NNU will get a bye and play the winner of that game right after it finishes for the title.
Just like the first game of the day, NNU scored one run in the first inning as
Alex Salsman singled home
Tyler Best to put the Nighthawks up 1-0.
Western Oregon took the lead in the fourth, though, as WOU's John Stark hit a two-run homer. The Wolves would add a run in both the sixth and seventh innings to take the 4-1 win.
NNU had a few chances to score after the first inning, including two on with one out in the third, two on with two outs in the fifth, and two on with two outs in the ninth, but could not come up with a clutch hit to push across any more runs.
Three Nighthawks had multi-hit games, with
Parker Price,
Tyler Best, and
Duke Pahukoa all notching two apiece to combine for six of NNU's eight hits.
Spencer Schwehr started for NNU, going five innings and giving up three runs on three hits with two strikeouts.
Joseph Ihli allowed one run in three innings of relief, before
Shane Martin closed the game with a scoreless ninth.
As mentioned, NNU will now await the winner of WOU and MSUB to play for the automatic bid to next week's NCAA West Regional.
