PHOENIX – Abilene Christian spoiled Grand Canyon's Senior Day with a 4-3 win on Sunday.
The win strengthened ACU's hopes of an important No. 2 seeding in the Western Athletic Conference standings. The Cats are tied with California Baptist and Tarleton State for third – a game back of Utah Valley. UVU hosts league champion GCU next week.
The top two seeds get a bye to the second round of the double-elimination portion of the WAC Tournament.
Reese Borho broke a scoreless tie in the top of the third when he launched a three-run home run.
Brett Lanman pitched five innings of scoreless, two-hit baseball and exited with the lead. Despite some drama, the Cats never relinquished the lead and Lanman improved to 7-2 on the season.
GCU got a run in the sixth, but the Wildcats answered in the top of the eighth when
Zandt Payne deftly executed a squeeze bunt to score
Maddox Miesse for a 4-1 lead.
Brett Garcia entered the bottom of the eighth with runners on the corners after a chopper off the bat of Eric Patton was ruled fair. The ball's first touch of the ground past first base was well foul but it was determined that the ball cleared first base in fair territory.
Garcia allowed two inherited runners to score but got ACU out of the inning with the lead. After allowing a one-out double in the bottom of the ninth, Garcia struck out the next two batters for a six-out save.
The Wildcats had a dozen hits, led by
Garrett Williams and Radtke with three each.
Gino D'Alessio added two and
Miller Ladusau, Borho, Miesse and
Aaron Staehely contributed one hit each.
The Wildcats, 30-22 overall and 16-11 in the league, host Seattle in the final regular-season series Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Seattle is outside of the playoff picture.
In addition to Utah Valley (17-10) hosting GCU, the schedule for the rest of the teams in the hunt for second place includes California Baptist (16-11) at Utah Tech (9-18) and Tarleton State (16-11) at UT Arlington (14-13).
The WAC Tournament is May 21-25 in Mesa, Ariz.
