FRESNO, Calif. -- Less than 24 hours after clinching its third consecutive Pacific West Conference baseball championship, No. 10-ranked Azusa Pacific completed a road series win at Fresno Pacific with an 11-4 victory in the series finale.
After dropping the series opener, the Cougars won three straight, clinching the 2019 PacWest title in the process while Point Loma dropped three of four games at home to Hawai'i Hilo.
Junior centerfielder Cole Kleszcz led the offense from the leadoff spot, going 3-for-4 with three doubles and two RBIs. He led off the game with a double to left, then came around to score on a Fresno Pacific defensive miscue, and the Cougars scored a pair in the first inning and led the rest of the way.
John Szczesny went three innings in his sixth start of the year, handing a 4-1 lead off to a committee of six relievers who tossed one inning each.
With the win, Azusa Pacific improves to 34-11 overall and 24-4 in conference play, winning 23 of its past 25 games overall.
What's Next: The Cougars take on Point Loma in the final regular-season series, hosting a Tuesday, May 7 doubleheader against the No. 22-ranked Sea Lions before visiting Carroll B. Land Stadium, "America's Most Scenic Ballpark," for a Wednesday, May 8 doubleheader to conclude the regular season.
Playoff Picture: By virtue of locking up the PacWest title with five games left in the regular season, Azusa Pacific also claimed the conference's automatic berth into the six-team NCAA Division II West Regional Championship, which takes on a new format this year. The regional championship participants will be determined by three-team tournaments held at two separate sites May 16-18, with the winners of each three-team tournament meeting a week later (May 24-25) in a best-of-three series to determine the West Region champion. The eight regional champions advance to the NCAA Division II World Series in Cary, North Carolina (May 29-June 5).
How It Happened: Kleszcz doubled and scored in the first inning to get the offense rolling, and he added a one-out RBI double to extend the lead to 3-1 in the top of the second. The Cougars added single runs in the fourth, sixth, and seventh innings, pushing the lead to 6-1 heading into the eighth inning.
Azusa Pacific pitchers put up six zeroes after Fresno Pacific scored in the first inning, and the Sunbirds finally got back on the scoreboard with a two-run eighth inning that cut the margin to 6-3. Joseph Kim led off the ninth with a home run, his third of the year, and four of the next five hitters drew walks to plate another, making it 8-3. Kleszcz added a sacrifice fly before Mychael Goudreau hit a two-run ground-rule double to round out a five-run ninth which extended the lead to 11-3.
With the PacWest title already in hand by virtue of yesterday's doubleheader sweep, the Cougars had four players in the lineup who started for the first time this season. The new lineup still produced 11 runs on 11 hits as Azusa Pacific claimed its sixth consecutive PacWest series win.
Inside The Box Score: Osvaldo Tovalin batted .471 (8-for-17) in the four-game series, lifting his batting average to a team-high .412 (77-for-187)… Three others are batting .348 or higher, including Kleszcz, who is batting .379 (64-for-169) with a team-high 38 extra-base hits… Four players batted over .400 in the series, and Justin Gomez was the batting average leader for the series, going 7-for-12 (.583) with four runs, four RBIs, and three walks in the first three games of the series before earning a day off from catching duties on Saturday.
