Portland Pours It on the Aztecs : College baseball: Pilots eliminate SDSU from NCAA regionals with 12-5 decision.

There is at least one in every regional, a team that just doesn’t seem to have the credentials of the others.

In the NCAA West II Regional, that team was the University of Portland, third-place finisher in the Northern Division of the Pacific-10 Conference.

The Pilots earned a regional berth by winning their conference tournament, then played down to their mediocre record and were routed by Miami in the first round. But what a difference a day made.

On Friday, Portland staved off elimination with a rout of its own. The Pilots banged out 16 hits and gunned down San Diego State, 12-5, ending the Aztecs’ season.

Coming into the regional with the momentum of four Western Athletic Conference tournament victories in a row with their backs against the wall, the Aztecs fell behind in the middle innings and didn’t have the energy for a comeback.

SDSU (43-21) was out-pitched, out-hit and committed four errors.

Portland’s big inning was the sixth, in which it scored four times and broke a 4-4 tie.

The Pilots (31-18) had three hits in that inning, and SDSU matched them with three consecutive errors--all with two outs. Two of the miscues were charged to third baseman Steve Boucher. The other was made by shortstop Steve Dietz, the coach’s son.

Coach Jim Dietz pointed to the first error, a wild throw by Boucher, as the key mistake.

“It opened the floodgates,” Dietz said. “We went down from there.”

However, that was not to say Portland hitters didn’t do their fair share of damage. Geoff Loomis, Phil Geisler and Dugan Duffy, the Nos. 3, 4 and 5 hitters in the Pilot order, combined for eight hits and eight runs batted in. They reached base 12 times in 18 appearances and scored six runs.

“There for a while, everything we threw up there, they hit,” Dietz said.

Portland extended its lead by adding a run in the seventh and three more in the eighth as Dietz tried to stop the onslaught by shuffling in relievers. Starter Rick Navarro took the loss for the Aztecs. He was followed by relievers Mike Quick, Jerry Stafford, Mark Gapski, Joe Duggan and James Davis.

In a combined 3 1/3 innings, Aztec relievers allowed eight hits and five runs--four of them earned.

Duffy, the Pilots’ designated hitter, capped Portland’s scoring in the eighth by blasting a two-run home run far over the left-field fence. It was his first homer of the season and it followed a walk to Loomis and a run-scoring double by Geisler.