The Western baseball club traveled to La Grande, Ore., this past weekend for the Northern Pacific West Regionals Tournament.

After winning the first two games, Western fell short of making it to the College World Series in Florida after two crushing defeats at the hands of their division-rival University of Oregon team.

The weekend started off strong, with Western winning the first game of the weekend 9-3 against Utah’s Weber State University Thursday.  

After Weber State, Western played three games against Oregon. After winning the first game Friday, Western dropped two games Saturday to get knocked out of the tournament.

Western senior Adam Cochran started the first game against Weber State. Cochran pitched six innings and gave up three hits, no runs and two walks while recording four strikeouts.  

Western achieved success against Weber State with clutch hitting on offense, inluding a two-run home run by Western freshman Joe Fike.  Western senior Kyle Tait said the team capitalized on the mistakes and errors made by Weber State.  

The first game against Oregon was 13 innings and the Vikings pulled off an 11-9 win with a home run in the 13th inning Friday. Western faired much worse in Saturday’s games, with two losses of 17-8 and 20-2.  

Solid pitching from Western senior Adam Bloom helped Western to stay on top in the first game against Oregon. Bloom gave up four runs in five innings of work off three hits and five walks. Tait called the game the most exciting of the tournament since they were able to win against Oregon.  

Western senior Mike Morris, who had the game winning two-run homerun in the 13th inning, said he thought the team had lost the game by the ninth inning.  

“Oregon was hitting the ball well in the ninth,” Morris said.  “[Oregon] had a lot of momentum going into the extra innings.”

Going into Saturday, Western only had to win one of two games against Oregon to knock them out in the double-elimination tournament. Due to a number of errors on defense which Oregon’s offense capitalized on, Western was unable to win either of the two final games.

“The team came out a little flat and had a couple of defensive errors,” Tait said.  “After that, the team just fell apart.”

Tait said the team was nervous and put a lot of pressure on themselves while Oregon came out hitting the ball well.

“Our team was 100 percent different between the first two games and the last [two],” Tait said. “Maybe we were a little overconfident, or we felt like we only had to win one to make it past [Oregon].”

Western freshman Bennett Mills came in to pitch after Western junior Blair Wyman started in the fifth inning of the fourth game.  He said the pitchers were pitching well, but the defense was not able to bounce back from multiple errors after two outs in big innings for Oregon.

Tait said Western is still trying to get past the Oregon curse and make it to Florida.  Oregon has kept Western from reaching their goals of making it to Florida the last two season Western qualified for the regional tournament.  

Although the team has a couple of gaps to fill in the roster next year, Tait said if he comes back to Western next year to pursue a minor, he feels confident about Western’s chances to return to the regional tournament.

“We know that we can compete and deserve to compete,” Tait said.  “We hope to finish in the top two in the conference again.”

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