Zags Lose Home Finale in Extra Innings

Gonzaga looked to finish the year out strong with seven of their last ten games at home. The friendly confines of Patterson Baseball Complex were not so friendly to the Zags during this home stand as they dropped 4 of their last 7 including a current three-game skid after tonight's loss to Washington State. The Zags dropped their home finale 7-5 in eleven innings.

The trend for Gonzaga the past few games has been jumping out to early leads and not be able to hold on down the stretch and that continued tonight. The Zags jumped out of the gate with five runs in the bottom half of the first inning. In one of the wilder first innings, Gonzaga scored these five runs off of one single hit by Ryan Wiegand. After three walks and two hit batters, Washington State's starting pitcher Connor Lambert was relieved by Chad Arnold. Arnold went on to throw a wild pitch which brought another run in. All in all, only one run was brought in by a hit, the rest were brought in by a variation of wild pitches, walks, and hit batters.

That would be the last action the Gonzaga offense would produce on this occasion as the Cougar pitching staff shut the Zags down the rest of the game. Washington State scored two runs in the top-half of the seventh to tie it up at five and send it into extra innings. The first batter in the 11th for the Cougars reached on a error by Gonzaga center fielder Drew Heid and that would prove costly as that run would be the game winner for WSU. The Zags were able to rack up nine hits throughout the game but failed to put anything together after the first inning.

Gonzaga will finish out their 2008 campaign in L.A. this coming weekend as they take on Loyola Marymount in a three-game series.