Azusa Pacific Makes Itself at Home

Azusa Pacific is the favorite to defend its NAIA District 3 baseball title for several reasons.

There’s the history: the Cougars have won two of the past four district titles and were runners-up the other two seasons. Azusa, the only district team to be ranked nationally this season, was No. 23 in the final NAIA poll. The Cougars have a .311 team batting average and have won 23 of their past 27 games after starting the season 7-7.

But the biggest obstacle facing Christ College Irvine and Southern California College in the district tournament, which starts today, is Azusa’s home-field advantage.

Azusa (30-11) is 14-1 at home, losing only to SCC, 5-3, in April when the Vanguards scored two runs in the top of the ninth. The Cougars are 74-15 at home the past four seasons and since merging with Los Angeles Pacific College in 1965, they have won more than 70% of their home games.

The field’s diminutive dimensions (320 feet to left, 355 in the alleys and 310 to right) have proved to be an advantage to the Cougars’ strong hitting teams.

“It’s a great equalizer,” said Nick Dawson, Azusa Pacific sports information director. “With our short field, a team can get behind by four or five runs in the early innings and an inning later it might draw a couple walks and then hit a fly ball to left that’s an instant homer. At SCC, to hit a home run you really need to power the ball because the wind blows in at the batter. Here, line drives that would have been in the gap and fly balls that are normally outs can turn into home runs.

“Boom, you can get back into a game pretty quick.”

At stake in the district tournament is a May 14-16 trip to either Spokane, Wash., or Lewiston, Ida., for the NAIA Area 1 tournament, which matches the champions of the first (Washington, Ida.), second (Oregon, Ida.), third (California) and 29th (Hawaii) districts. The winner of the Area 1 tournament, which will likely include Lewis-Clark (Ida.) State, the second-ranked team in the nation, will advance to the NAIA World Series, May 22-28 in Des Moines, Iowa.

Southern California College (23-21-1), the only Golden State Athletic Conference team to split its four games with Azusa, and Christ College Irvine (28-14) play each other at 11 a.m. today in a first-round game of the double-elimination tournament. The winner will advance to play the Azusa-Biola (15-26) winner Friday at 12:30 p.m. The loser will play Friday at 3:30 p.m.

The champion will be decided Saturday.

Stuck at 29: Chapman’s baseball team, which appeared to be in contention for an NCAA playoff berth early in its first Division I season, has lost six consecutive games and has three games remaining to get its 30th victory. The Panthers (29-22) play a doubleheader against Nevada in Reno Saturday and finish Tuesday at Cal State Long Beach.

Buster Nietzke, a junior from Saddleback College, has a 14-game hitting streak and leads the team with a .333 batting average.

Notes

Chapman men’s tennis player Aris Vassiliou was invited to the NCAA Division II individual tennis championships, which start Monday at Central Oklahoma in Edmond, Okla. Vassiliou, who was 16-9 in the regular season, is ranked No. 26 in the nation. Uwe Olivella, the Panthers’ No. 2 player, was chosen as an alternate. . . . Christ College Irvine had three players named to the first-team, all-district baseball team: catcher Robert Campillo, third baseman Jim Vlcek and pitcher/outfielder Mike Adams. Adams batted .367 and had a 9-4 record with a 3.32 earned-run average. SCC pitcher David Black, a senior from Orange Coast College and El Modena High, was the Vanguards’ only first-team selection. Black had a 7-3 record with a 1.50 ERA, the lowest in the district. Black, Campillo and Evans were also all-conference selections. SCC catcher Matt Dahlgren and SCC outfielder Justin Pysar were each all-conference and honorable mention all-district selections, as was CCI second baseman/pitcher Armando Diaz. CCI outfielder Armando Olivares was an all-conference selection. CCI’s Lonnie Zimmerman and Mike Crumrine, and SCC’s Doug Rystrom each received all-district honorable mention honors. . . . SCC third baseman Albert Contrera was named the district and conference player of the week for his performance in the Vanguards’ doubleheader against CCI Saturday. Contrera, a sophomore from University High, raised his average from .220 to .262 with a seven-for-eight performance. He had two home runs and four RBIs.