Baseball | 5/23/2015 9:23:00 PM
Box Score TUCSON, Ariz. – The ACU Wildcats closed out the 2015 baseball season Saturday with an impressive win over Hawaii in the season finale at Hi Corbett Field.
The Wildcats scored five runs in their final two at-bats – culminated by
Russell Crippen's mammoth two-run home run in the bottom of the eighth inning – to finish the season with a 7-4 win over the Rainbow Warriors. The victory helps the Wildcats end the season at 17-38 and on a two-game winning streak after a solid 2-1 win late Friday night over Arizona.
The win marked the first time since 1995 that ACU was victorious in its final game of the season, although several of those seasons in the 20-year interval ended with losses in either conference or NCAA regional tournaments and one season (2003) in the College World Series.
The victory also helped the Wildcats finish the season 7-7 in May, the program's first break-even month this season and only the second in two years of NCAA Division I play (5-2 in February 2014 with three wins vs. non-Division I opponents). Last year's ACU team finished 2-13 in May as it ended the season on a 6-25 skid. This year's team started 5-15 and finished 2-14 and finished 15-24.
"We put these guys in tough positions all season, and they kept scratching and bouncing back," said ACU head coach
Britt Bonneau, who finished his 19th season as head coach.. "Our record certainly isn't where we want it to be, but we're building a program to compete for and win Southland Conference championships by 2018, and this weekend we took a big step forward."
Coming off Friday night's narrow win over Arizona, the Wildcats sent freshman right-hander
Drew Hanson to the mound to face the Rainbow Warriors (21-30 overall and 12-12 in the Big West Conference). Hanson gave the Wildcats six quality innings, allowing six hits and two runs while striking out four batters.
The game was tied 2-2 going to the seventh inning when ACU reliever
Nick Palacios — who would go on to pick up the win and improve to 2-1 — gave up a pair of runs as the Rainbow Warriors grabbed a 4-2 lead. One run came home on Alan Baldwin's one-out single over a drawn-in infield, and another came in on a sacrifice fly by Kaeo Aliviado.
But the Wildcats – as they have done so often this season – got off the mat and responded with three runs of their own in the bottom of the seventh to regain the lead at 5-4.
Kyle Carroll led off the seventh with a single and went to second when
Tyler Eager – in the final game of his brilliant ACU career – walked. Both runners advanced on a Crippen sacrifice bunt, and then Carroll scored to make it 4-3 on an RBI groundout by
Alex Copeland.
With Eager at third,
Colton Hall chopped a ground ball over the head of Hawaii third baseman Jonathan Weeks to score Eager and tie the game, 4-4. Hall then stole second and scored on a two-out single up the middle by freshman catcher
Mason Spracklen, giving ACU a 5-4 lead.
Kevin Sheets then came on in the eighth and worked around a one-out hit to get out of the inning unscathed, sending his offense back to do some more damage.
That damage was done by Crippen, who crushed his team-leading fourth home run of the season to almost straightaway centerfield, a two-run shot that scored
Aaron Draper in front of him to give the Wildcats a 7-4 lead. Sheets allowed two baserunners in the top of the ninth on a walk and a hit batter, but got a pair of groundouts to finish the game.
"This team fought hard all season, and that was on display (Saturday)," Bonneau said. "This team set the groundwork for teams in the future in terms of how we want to be able to take a punch and keep coming back. We did that (Saturday), getting down a couple of runs and then coming back to take the lead and then putting it away with those two runs in the eighth inning. I'm proud of a lot of things about this team, but especially the way it continued to fight through a lot of challenges during the season."
