LOS ANGELES, Calif. – Eighty-one. That’s the amount of outs you need to win a regional if you start the bracket 2-0. In their first four trips to the dance, Cal Poly Baseball had stumbled somewhere on their way through the bracket. They have needed to win three games in two days in each of their last two NCAA postseason trips, and failed to do so both times.
Now they stand on the flip side of the equation. They have started 2-0 for the first time in Los Angeles and have two cracks at getting 27 outs to claim their first trip to a Super Regional in program history.
The Mustangs (38-22) dispatched fellow West Coast mid-major Saint Mary’s Gaels (35-26) with an offensive flair in the winners bracket game, a 14-1 final Saturday night at Jackie Robinson Stadium.
WATCH NOW: Offense explodes for 14 runs as Cal Poly Baseball moves onto NCAA Los Angeles Regional Final
Headlining the offensive festivities was Ryan Tayman breaking the Division-I program record for home runs with his 17th blast as part of a 3-3, 3 RBI night.
“I think I’ve been putting together good at-bats in the Big West Tournament and here, and I haven’t really been finding the barrel too much, but I’ve been finding away on base, today I found the barrel,” Tayman said. “The record, it’s awesome, but I think it’s a credit to a lot of people around me too. It’s not just me, it’s a whole organization.”
It wasn’t just Tayman who was working overtime on offense, one person can’t plate 14 runs by himself. Eight of the starting nine collected an RBI, and eight of the starting nine scored a run.
Nate Castellon set the tone offensively with a 3-6 game from the leadoff spot, Alejandro Garza followed suit with a 2-5 night behind him. At the bottom of the lineup Dante Vachini and Gavin Spiridonoff got on base a combined five times to flip the lineup. Up and down the lineup there were contributions from every player.
Even the lone player who didn’t get a hit contributed in ways the box score couldn’t show. Dylan Kordic may have had a hitless night, but he played incredible defense including a back pick on a base hit to kill Saint Mary’s momentum in the second.
For an offense that looked well out of sync in the Big West Tournament, only scoring 11 runs across their four games, they figured it out in Westwood with 20 runs in the first two games of the tournament against what should in theory be better pitching.
“It wasn’t anything physical, it was just not trying to do too much, just utilizing your breath and keeping things simple, and not over complicating things.” Head Coach Larry Lee said. “They’re good ball players, it’s a good offense, they just need to have the right mindset.”
Carson Turnquist didn’t need his grade-A stuff to earn his ninth victory of the season, but he brought it anyway. Against the third-highest batting average in the nation in the Gaels (.332) he silenced the bats to the tune of five hits across six innings with just one earned run in the second inning and seven strikeouts.
Over half of his strikeouts were catching the Gaels looking for something else, and he generated swing and misses all day long.
“My location was solid. I think just treating every pitch as the same and taking everything like pitch to pitch really changed it for me,” Turnquist said.
The only inning Turnquist truly had trouble was in the second when the Gaels scored, and that is when Kordic picked him up and wiped a baserunner off the board with his arm.
Chris Downs, Josh Morano and Troy Cooper followed out of the bullpen, giving up a couple of hits but holding Saint Mary’s scoreless the rest of the way.
With the victory Cal Poly gets two chances to win the regional against the winner of Saint Mary’s-UCLA in the 1 p.m. game on Sunday. Whoever comes out of that game will be playing their fourth game in three days and their second game of the day compared to just Cal Poly’s third game of the tournament and first of the day. It was an advantage the Mustangs squandered in the Big West Tournament last weekend.
“We made the mistake in the Big West Tournament. We kind of were looking ahead, so don’t make the same mistake twice,” Tayman said.
First pitch for Cal Poly’s game on Sunday is scheduled for 6 p.m., but could move depending on how late the previous game goes.
