RIVERSIDE, Calif. - Abilene Christian baseball captured a share of the Western Athletic Conference regular season title with a 7-6 win over California Baptist at Totman Stadium on Saturday. The Wildcats fended off a ninth-inning rally by the Lancers to secure their first conference championship since 2021's Southland Conference regular season title.
Brett Lanman earned his team-high seventh win of the season after tossing three innings and allowing one run on two hits and two walks with three strikeouts.
Henry Cone tied for the team lead with his fourth save after facing just one batter and recording the final out. In between,
Andrew Guardino and
OJ Gonzalez combined for five innings with just one unearned run on three hits, a walk and four punchouts.
California Baptist's Cameron Teper was saddled with the loss while surrendering two runs, two hits and a walk in 1 1/3 frames.
Diego Cardenas stretched his hitting streak to seven games with a three-hit effort, including a seventh-inning solo home run that provided a key insurance run. He did so on the heels of Friday's four-hit, three-home run performance. He now has hits in 11 of his last 13 contests and leads ACU with 16 long balls.
Ranse Radtke, making his 16th start of the season, plated three runs with two hits.
Reese Borho joined Cardenas with three hits, two runs and one run batted in.
Radtke got the scoring started in the second inning with an RBI single before
Brady Gray came home on a wild pitch.
Zandt Payne gave the Wildcats an early 3-0 lead with an RBI double that plated Radtke.
ACU put up another three-spot in the third inning as Cardenas hit a leadoff single and was brought home on Borho's RBI single. Two batters later, Radtke knocked in two more runs with a single up the middle, pushing the Wildcats ahead, 6-0.
The Lancers put themselves on the board in the home half of the frame behind Andrew Walters' RBI double and got another run back in the sixth with Julian Alvarez's RBI single.
Cardenas gave ACU a 7-2 edge with a solo shot to lead off the seventh inning, a run that proved critical as California Baptist battled back in the bottom of the ninth. With two outs, Chris Ramirez brought the Lancers within four runs thanks to an RBI single. A hit batter and a walk loaded the bases for Jake Brown, who cleared the bags on a three-run single. Cone entered with the Wildcats' lead shrunk to 7-6 and induced an infield popup to close it out.
With a share of its first WAC title in program history, ACU earned the No. 2 seed at next week's University Credit Union WAC Baseball Tournament in Mesa, Ariz. behind top-seeded Sacramento State. It's the second consecutive season the Wildcats have grabbed the No. 2 seed. They'll get started at Hohokam Stadium at 10:30 a.m. Thursday against No. 3 Utah Valley, No. 6 Tarleton State or No. 7 UT Arlington on ESPN+.
