Duo Leads Beach to Conference Opener

Friday, March 31

Long Beach, Calif.

6:30 PM

Long Beach State University

13-15, 0

UC Irvine

18-11, 0

UC Irvine

Long Beach State

3/31/2006 12:00:00 AM | Baseball

Box Score

Longoria and Hughes Lead Beach to Big West Win
Beach Win Conference Opener 7-1

March 31, 2006

BOX SCORE

LONG BEACH, CA-- It was Evan Longoria early and Jared Hughes late as Long Beach State (13-15, 0-1 Big West) opened up Big West play with a 7-1 over No. 36-ranked UC Irvine (18-11, 0-1 Big West). The win snapped a seven-game losing streak by LBSU.

Longoria went 2-for-3 with a homer, while Jared Hughes (5-1) went eight strong innings, giving up just one run on four hits for the second straight start. He struck out five as well.

Longoria's sixth homer of the year, cleared the leftfield fence and gave LBSU a 2-0 lead in the first inning. It was then Longoria on the defensive end over the next half of the game, making play after play to keep the Dirtbags in front.

The next half inning Longoria made a stab and save on a ball down the third base line to get Spike McDougall, then made another great defensive play on Tyler Vaughn's slow roller in the second.

The defense continued in the third, as Longoria dove and caught a line drive and doubled off Aaron Lowenstein at third to end the inning. The junior then took a ball off of Hughes' glove and made a barehanded play to end the fifth.

A two-out bloop single by Robert Perry gave the Dirtbags a 3-0 advantage in the third.

Danny Espinosa made a couple of nice defensive plays at short in the sixth and eighth inning, each time going deep in the hole to make the out.

Two doubles in the eighth made it 4-1, before LBSU ignited for three more paced by a bases loaded walk, an RBI single from Tom Wolf and a sacrifice fly to make it 7-1.

Justin Cassel (3-5) twice retired six in a row in the contest, but pitched a lot better than his line indicated, giving up five runs (four earned) on five hits over seven innings. Dylan Axelrod, who gave up two walks and two hits in the seventh, gave up two other runs.

The 405-freeway series continues at Blair Field on Saturday at 2 p.m. and Sunday at 1 p.m. It is one of two freeway series in the area this weekend, as Chavez Ravine and the City of Anaheim also serve as hosts to the "other" series between 5-freeway rivals.


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