Long Beach State (19-5 overall, 13-1 Big West Conference) extended their winning streak to ten games Saturday, after winning both games of a doubleheader against UC Santa Barbara. (8-24 overall, 5-7 Big West Conference).
Long Beach jumped on top early when a second inning walk and single set up an RBI groundout by Justine Briones and an RBI single by Lilyanna Martinez to make it 2-0.
The Beach kept up the pressure in the following innings, scoring two more runs in the third inning and adding another run in the fourth to put them up 5-0.
Alyssa Gonzalez lead the team’s offense, bringing her Big West leading batting average up to .493, going 3-for-4 with 5 RBI’s, including a 3-run home run to left field that put her team up 8-1 and out of reach for the Gauchos.
Long Beach starting pitcher Kellie White continued her dominant season, only giving up a pair of runs while pitching a complete game and holding her ERA lead in the Big West Conference.
Long Beach’s 8-2 win extended their streak to nine games with one of their top pitchers, Shannon Haddad, going up against the Gaucho’s top pitcher Emily Schuttish in game two.
Both team’s starters put up zeros despite dealing with traffic their first time through the opposing lineups. Each pitcher stranded three runners in the first two innings of the game.
The game remained scoreless until the fifth inning, when a single by Martinez and a double by Hernandez put runners on second and third base for Long Beach’s Gonzalez. She would single to right field and score both runners to give the Beach a 2-0 lead.
The following inning, Santa Barbara hit two singles and a walk to load the bases when a triple by Korie Thomas plated three and gave the Gauchos their first lead. Another run would score off an error to make it 4-2 Gauchos.
The Beach came up in the seventh inning and quickly grounded and flied out against Schuttish for two outs. Long Beach’s top two offensive players of the season came up to bat with the team down to their final out. Gonzalez singled over the glove of first baseman Rayna Cohen, and Suzy Brookshire hit her ninth homerun of the season over the left field wall to tie the game 5-5.
Three straight singles by Long Beach plated another run in the seventh and made it 6-5. White, who pitched all seven innings of game one, pitched the final 1.1 innings of the game to give Long Beach their 10th straight victory.
Long Beach and Santa Barbara will play the series finale, a non-conference game Sunday at 1 p.m.