Chapman Battles to Reach .500

The Chapman baseball team lost a wild game Wednesday when Azusa Pacific scored in the bottom of the ninth for an 18-17 victory.

Azusa Pacific’s Jason Young, a senior from University High, drove in the winning run with a bases-loaded single. Young went four for five with a home run and two runs batted in.

Chapman, which had 16 of the game’s 35 hits, had taken an 8-0 lead in the second inning. But Azusa Pacific (14-8) bounced back to take a 17-11 lead after seven innings.

The Panthers scored two in the eighth and four in the ninth, tying the score on Jason Moeller’s two-out single.

In the ninth, Chapman’s sixth pitcher of the game, Allen Martinez, gave up two walks and hit a batter before Young’s single.

Chapman was led by sophomore right fielder Mike Konkol, who had three doubles and four RBIs, and junior first baseman Robert O’Brien, who had three hits and five RBIs.

The Panthers beat Fontbonne (Mo.) Thursday to improve to 7-7 for the season. They host Dartmouth at 1 p.m. today at Hart Park.

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Women’s basketball: Concordia will make its first appearance in the NAIA tournament since 1993.

The Eagles, 28-5 and on a 16-game winning streak, will play eighth-seeded Lewis-Clark (Idaho) State in the first round Wednesday in Jackson, Tenn.

The school, then called Christ College Irvine, made consecutive appearances in the tournament in 1992 and 1993, losing in the first round each time.

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Men’s basketball: Concordia narrowly missed a trip to Tulsa for the NAIA tournament when the Eagles lost, 73-71, to Azusa Pacific in the Golden State Athletic Conference tournament final Tuesday. The Eagles, fifth-seeded and lightly regarded before the tournament, gave top-seeded Azusa Pacific a scare, only falling when senior guard Rick Haywood missed a running eight-footer at the buzzer.

“Our team believed that we deserved to be here,” Haywood said after the game, “and we played like we should have been here. Unfortunately, we couldn’t finish it out.

“It would have been nice to go to Tulsa.”