A heavyweight tilt. A marquee matchup. Choose your sporting clich茅. In terms of the West Coast League of baseball, this was a potential league playoff final preview featuring the respective first-half champions of the North and South Divisions.
The Victoria HarbourCats bused out of Corvallis, Oregon, Monday night with a 2-1 series advantage following their 5-0 victory over the Knights at Goss Stadium.
Victoria outlasted Corvallis 7-5 in the 12th inning in the opener on Saturday night, before the Knights splattered out 17 hits in a 9-2 victory Sunday.
The HarbourCats are 31-11. The Knights, sponsored by namesake Penny Knight, wife of Nike co-founder Phil Knight, are 24-18.
But both teams have had their issues in the second half of the season, in which Victoria is 8-7 and Corvallis 6-9. Not that they have to worry about it because their respective first-half divisional titles assured both the Cats and Knights playoff berths.
Ryan Anderson doubled home A.J. Alcantara and Tommy Jew then doubled home Anderson to make it 2-0 in the top of the second inning in Monday鈥檚 game. Jake Stone drove in Jew and it was 3-0 in Victoria鈥檚 big inning on the night. Matt Lautz and Jew scored runs in the top of the seventh to close out scoring. UC-Santa Barbara鈥檚 Jew finished with two hits, a walk, two runs and an RBI in squeezing much out of his three trips to the plate.
Victoria starter Blake Hannah out of UC-Davis gave up five hits with two strikeouts and one walk over eight complete innings for the shutout victory.
鈥淚 wanted to throw strikes and get the Corvallis batters to get themselves out,鈥� said Hannah, 2-2 with three starts on the season, and a 2.90 ERA.
It worked because Hannah got the backing. 鈥淥ur defence was perfect tonight,鈥� he said.
鈥淐orvallis is a good, scrappy team that is deep and knows what it is doing. But I made certain if one of them got on base, they were not going to get to second.鈥�
Cam Schneider mowed down three in a row, with a strikeout, in relief in the ninth inning at Goss Stadium, which also hosts the NCAA Pac-12 Oregon State Beavers.
The HarbourCats drove through the night, caught a morning ferry, and return to Royal Athletic Park tonight to begin a three-game set against the Walla Walla Sweets. It is part of the 18 games in 19 days that will close out the regular season for the HarbourCats.
