BILLINGS, Mont. – It took two games, but Northwest Nazarene baseball got the win they needed on Saturday to claim the GNAC Tournament Championship.
NNU fell in a close 4-3 matchup in the opener, but rallied to take a 5-1 win in the final game to clinch the title.
The Nighthawks improve to 36-12-1 overall and will not have to worry as the selections are announced on NCAA.com at 8:30 p.m. Mountain Sunday night, having earned the GNAC's automatic bid into NCAA Regionals.
The 36 victories break the program record for wins in a season, passing the previous mark of 35 set in the historic 2021 campaign when NNU made it to the College World Series. The win was also the 500
th head coaching victory of
Joe Schaefer's career split between Point Loma and Northwest Nazarene.
In game one, Western Oregon took a 1-0 lead in the first inning but the Nighthawks responded with two in the top of the fourth to take a 2-1 advantage. The lead was short-lived, however, as the Wolves scored three in the bottom of the inning.
WOU held that 4-2 lead to the ninth inning, where the Nighthawks tried to rally but came up one run short in the 4-2 defeat.
It was NNU who struck first in the winner-take-all final game, as GNAC Championships MVP
Bryan Rojas knocked an RBI single in the second inning. Rojas also drove in the next Nighthawks run with another RBI single in the fourth. The two-way player also pitched in the first game of the series, earning the win over Central Washington.
Carter Walsh also added an RBI single in the fourth to put NNU up 3-0. The lead grew to 4-0 in the next inning as
Trevor Tishenkel launched a solo homer to right, and a
Duke Pahukoa RBI single in the seventh grew the advantage to 5-0 with two innings to play.
NNU starter
Kailer Saunders excelled on the mound, tossing six scoreless innings while allowing just four hits and striking out five.
Wade Duncan entered in the sixth, and worked around five WOU hits to allow just one run, benefiting tremendously from a double play to end the seventh and a rare 5-4-3 triple play to end a Wolves threat in the eighth.
With two on and two out in the ninth, Duncan then struck out the final batter to end it, igniting a celebration of the Nighthawks pouring out onto the field.
Next Up
As mentioned, NNU will wait to find out where they fall in the NCAA Regional Rankings when selections are announced Sunday night. Six teams will reach the postseason from the West Region, with the top two seeds serving as host sites. NNU was ranked fifth in the last version of the NCAA's regional rankings on May 8.
