Road to State Finals : El Camino Going for 3 Wins Today

The dark side of scheduling three community college playoff games in one day got to El Camino College on Saturday around 7:30 p.m.

After escaping elimination in the Southern California regional playoffs with a 9-6 win against College of the Canyons (32-8) in a 9 a.m. start at Cerritos College, El Camino (30-15) carried an 8-4 lead over Cypress (33-10) into the seventh inning of a 3 p.m. contest whose start was delayed until 4:45 due to the noon game that ran late.

By the end of the seventh inning, with little daylight brightening the field, Cypress had jumped to a 10-8 advantage. The game then was postponed because of darkness, and the teams will play the final two innings today, beginning at 9 a.m.

Losing its first game of the double-elimination tournament to Cypress on Friday meant the Warriors had to win three straight games to advance to next weekend’s state finals at UC Irvine. A win over Cypress would qualify El Camino for the championship game against Cerritos (36-11) today at 11.

Cerritos, a team the Warriors beat three times in South Coast Conference play, hasn’t lost yet, so the double-elimination formula means that El Camino must sweep a doubleheader from Cerritos today or go on summer vacation.

“We’ll get out here early tomorrow,” El Camino Coach Tom Hicks said, after seeing his club surrender a comfortable lead over Cypress. “There is a chance that we’d win three games in one day, and we want to go the finals.”

Hicks indicated that Lucio Chiadez, who threw one-third of an inning in relief on Saturday against Cypress after starting and exiting early in Friday’s loss, would probably pitch the remaining two innings of Saturday’s game. Cypress Coach Scott Pickler hinted that either Bill Bentley or Ben Gonzalez could face El Camino.

The uncertainty reflects how much a double-elimination tournament can test junior college pitching staffs that generally rely on two starters.

Chiadez’s ineffectiveness in Friday’s game forced Hicks to use reliever Dave Seward, originally a probable starter in one of this weekend’s games.

Seward was called on to throw four innings of relief to save the win against Canyons and one-third of a frame against Cypress, for which he would get the loss if Cypress wins today.

“Maybe pitching three times in two days or twice in one day got to him,” Hicks said of Seward, a sophomore southpaw who yielded four consecutive hits and four runs in the fateful seventh inning against Cypress. “He was just getting the ball up.”

In Saturday’s first game, sophomore Jeff Beck, still suffering from arm stiffness that hampered him late in the regular season, kept the ball down long enough to record his 12th victory of the season against three defeats.

The 6-foot-1, 205-pound right-hander allowed five runs on seven hits in eight innings while sporting a freshly shaven head, a style shared only by first-baseman Colin Franker.

“Why not?” Beck said. “That’s kind of my style, and the team hasn’t made it to the finals since the 1950s.”

Pablo Suarez (6-2) took the loss for Canyons.