A week ago, after another poor Tuesday performance in a home loss to New Mexico, Chip Hale floated the idea of cancelling some upcoming midweek games in order to keep his pitching fresh for the weekend.
Whether that plan is still under consideration is unknown, but it was evident Hale wasn’t going to pass up a chance to beat a nemesis during his coaching tenure.
Arizona beat the Grand Canyon 5-4 on Tuesday night at Hi Corbett Field, its first midweek win of the season in five tries. The Lopes had won
7-5 in Tucson earlier in March, their 10th victory in now 15 tries since Hale became coach in 2022.
“They just seem to come down here, or when we’re up there, they’re very comfortable,” Hale said. “And we’ve got to get that comfortability back. We have to feel like it’s our game to win.”
Arizona (9-15) led 5-0 after three innings, getting a solo home run from Tony Lira, three RBI from catcher Roman Meyers and an RBI from Mathis Meurant, who had the first 3-hit day of his career. But despite getting eight more baserunners the rest of the way the Wildcats couldn’t add to their lead, leaving the bases loaded twice.
“We had a lot of opportunities to add on,” Hale said. “Two strike at-bats are getting better and better season goes, but we’ve got to do more damage with guys on base. We just got to get that 2-out hit. We’re not getting that right now.”
That allowed GCU to cut away at the lead, using a pair of 2-run homers to get within 5-4. The second was off reliever Patrick Morris in the 8th, who then had the tying run on 3rd base with two outs after center fielder Carson McEntire dove for a low liner and missed it, but despite going 3-0 got an inning-ending strikeout.
The 9th saw Garrett Hicks, who did not retire a batter in a disastrous outing Sunday against Texas Tech, give up a 2-out double but then recover for his second save.
“Those are, those are big outs for us,” Hale said. “A run-rule game is great. But maybe, winning a game like that helps everybody.”
The first four innings were thrown by true freshman Jack Lafflam, who had the best outing of his career despite giving up a 2-run homer. He came into the game with an 18.00 ERA in five innings of work with eight walks but did not walk a batter and struck out two.
“It was definitely just trusting my stuff … trusting my defense, being able to throw in the zone consistently and trust that I’m gonna get outs behind me,” Lafflam said.
Arizona hits the road for its next Big 12 series, visiting UCF. The Knights (15-8, 5-1) are tied for first in the Big 12 with West Virginia, who will be at Hi Corbett on Tuesday for a nonconference game.
