Canyons Must Make Solid Pitch

No two ways about it, College of the Canyons is facing its most crucial baseball game of the season.

The Cougars (33-13) play at Saddleback (35-8) on Friday at 3 p.m. in a second-round game of the Southern California Regional.

Canyons, short on pitching, needs to upset the Gauchos and avoid dropping into the losers’ bracket of the four-team, double-elimination tournament that runs through Sunday.

The tournament winner advances to the four-team state championships May 24-26 at Fresno.

“It seems that the only teams that usually come out of the losers’ bracket to win [tournaments] are the home teams,” said Len Mohney, Canyons coach.

The Cougars advanced by sweeping Cerritos in a best-of-three first-round series last weekend and Saddleback, ranked No. 2 in the state, swept Southwestern.

“We need to score a lot of runs in this tournament,” Mohney said.

Canyons relies on two starters, right-handers Kevin Hyde and Jim McNeel, so losing to Saddleback would be nearly catastrophic. By losing in the first round, the Cougars would be forced to win two games each Saturday and Sunday.

But if the pitching holds, as it did in 11-3 and 10-4 victories over Cerritos, the Cougars could challenge because of their bats. They finished second in the Western State Conference in batting with a .368 average.

Here’s the bad news for Canyons: Saddleback also can hit.

The Gauchos carry a .354 batting average and 13 of their 17 position players have batting averages of .300 or above. They are 21-1 at home this season.

Mohney doesn’t believe the Cougars are intimidated by Saddleback, the Orange Empire Conference runner-up.

“I think this [Canyons] team plays well under pressure,” Mohney said. “We have very good team chemistry. I just think when you have guys like that, anything can happen.”

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Cal State Northridge baseball Coach Mike Batesole has a point when he wonders if there are many teams that could bump the Matadors from the NCAA Division I tournament.

The Matadors (42-20-1), who play as independents, won’t know if they are included in the 48-team Division I field until Monday, when regional pairings are announced.

Sure, eight of those victories were against lower-division teams, but the Matadors proved they match up with national powers such as USC and UCLA.

Last season, the Matadors won 10 games against lower-division schools, but got into the tournament by winning the Western Athletic Conference title and defeating West Coast Conference champion Santa Clara in a best-of-three play-in.

Northridge, playing in the West Regional at Palo Alto, came within one victory of reaching the College World Series.

The seeding committee shouldn’t forget that.

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Not that our vote counts, but here’s one for Adam Kennedy of Northridge as national player of the year.

The junior shortstop is among the top five in the NCAA’s all-time lists for total bases (254), hits (134) and doubles (32) in a season. He holds eight career and six one-season records at Northridge.

Most likely someone from a prominent school will receive the award but Kennedy deserves consideration.

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Memo to Terry Morris, new football coach at Ventura:

Cheer up. Although the Pirates won only 10 games in the past four years, they are poor in only two areas: Offense and defense.

Ventura was ninth in the 13-team WSC in offense at 366.4 yards per game last season, and 12th in defense, allowing an average of 401.7.

Morris knows those numbers painfully well. He was the team’s defensive coordinator.

Benny Hoang, point guard on the Valley men’s basketball team the past two seasons who will play at Cal State Los Angeles, will receive a $500 scholarship from the California Community College Men’s Basketball Coaches Assn.

The award is based on academic achievement and basketball performance. Hoang has a 3.7 grade-point average and had 188 assists last season.

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Dan Bir, Canyons’ first baseman, has been hit by pitches 21 times this season, a school record nobody will want to break.

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Moorpark won the WSC athletic supremacy race for the 1996-97 school year, scoring 91 points.

It’s the ninth supremacy title for Moorpark, which edged Cuesta, which had 90 points, and Ventura, which finished with 88.

The other schools in the region finished in this order: Valley (sixth, 45 points), Glendale (eighth, 42), Canyons (10th, 39), Mission (11th, 26.5), Pierce (12th, 22) and Oxnard (14th, 12).