Fullerton Builds Lead and Keeps It

Cal State Fullerton showed Sunday that Long Beach State still can be beaten in a Big West Conference baseball game.

But one of the Titans’ problems is that they haven’t shown they can do it more than once in a three-game series this season.

Fullerton ended the 49ers’ school-record 15-game conference winning streak with an 8-5 victory in front of 1,288 at Titan Field. Still, Long Beach has a five-game lead over the Titans in the Big West’s Southern Division.

It was only the fourth loss in the last 24 games for Long Beach (26-14) and only their second in 18 conference games. Fullerton (23-18-1, 11-7) also won one of three games against the 49ers in the first series between the teams at Blair Field in early March.

“Our goal coming in was to sweep them, and then we were looking at that happening in reverse after Saturday,” Titan Coach George Horton said. “Long Beach has taken a team that I thought was comparable to ours when we played the first series, and they’ve done a better job of improving since then than we have.”

But Fullerton averted a Long Beach sweep that would have been the first in this series since 1993, because pitcher Brandon Duckworth held Long Beach scoreless through six innings while the Titans built an eight-run lead. “Duckworth gave us a good pitching performance, even though he ran out of gas,” Horton said.

Duckworth (6-1), who gave up nine of Long Beach’s 11 hits, was jarred by two-run homers in the seventh and eighth innings, but Mike Greenlee came on to finish off the 49ers and earn his third save.

“It was Fullerton’s day to get the big hits, and I thought Duckworth pitched well,” Long Beach Coach Dave Snow said. “The difference in this game was that their pitcher was in command early and ours wasn’t.”

Snow made a surprise start of Denny Gilich Jr. (3-3), deciding to hold out No. 3 pitcher Iran Barrera because of tendinitis in his shoulder. “I didn’t want to take any chance of losing him for a long period, and I expect him to be back in the rotation next weekend,” Snow said.

Titan catcher Mike Lamb, who drove in four runs, connected for a three-run homer off Gilich in the first, and Fullerton was rolling after that.

Lamb said it was a victory his team needed badly after three consecutive losses. “It was important for us to show that we can beat good teams,” Lamb said. “And that if we play hard, we can still win.” Lamb doubled in Fullerton’s fourth run in the third, and the Titans made it 5-0 in the fourth when Jerome Alviso’s hit drove in Nakia Hill, who had tripled. Alviso also scored on Pete Fukuhara’s hit off relief pitcher Matt Montgomery.

The Titans got runs in the fifth and sixth to build their lead to 8-0.

Duckworth lost his shutout in the seventh on Keith Cowley’s two-run homer, and then gave up another two-run homer to Toby Sanchez in the eighth before Greenlee got the final three outs in the inning.