Long Beach State Dirtbags blank San Diego State

LONG BEACH >> Pitcher Dave Smith and outfielder Lucas Tancas had uncertain futures with Long Beach State baseball a year ago. Tancas was recovering from serious injury while Smith was mired in the Tuesday night starting job.

On Friday night, Smith and Tancas led the Dirtbags to their first NCAA Regional win at Blair Field since 2008 over visiting San Diego State, 6-0. Smith was moved up a day in the rotation, and answered the call by pitching the first complete game of his career. Tancas, a first-year starter, had a hit, an RBI and a run scored in the first two iings to help build an early lead.

“We’ve been waiting for this for nine years,” Tancas said. “And so has the city of Long Beach. We wanted to give the crowd a reason to explode.”

The Blair Field crowd of 2,809 was bigger and more boisterous than most college games on the west coast. LBSU (38-17-1) will retu tonight at 7 p.m. to face Texas (38-22) in the double-elimination format. SDSU (41-20) and UCLA (30-26) will play at 1 p.m. in an elimination game.

“We don’t play in that atmosphere,” SDSU second baseman Alan Trejo said. “And we got caught up in the moment.”

“The crowd was awesome,” LBSU coach Troy Buckley said. “It helped us keep our momentum and the guys fed off of it. But this night belonged to Dave (Smith).”

Smith (9-1) pitched to contact but only gave up five hits and one walk with one strikeout. SDSU put the leadoff ruer on in five iings, but Smith only needed 98 pitches to go the distance. Tancas made two great plays in left field to rob SDSU of hits, and sophomore second baseman Jarren Duran helped tu important double plays in the third and ninth iings.

“He gave us fits,” SDSU coach Mark Martinez said. “We had a poor plan early. We were trying to cover everything and that’s hard to do against a plus pitcher.”

Smith improves to 4-0 in six appearances at Blair Field, and lowered his ERA to 1.46 for the season. Two-time Big West Pitcher of the Year Darren McCaughan was the Friday night starter all year, but Buckley wanted to give hime a chance for more rest while giving Smith the best possible match up.

“I was excited and trusted my coaches,” Smith said of taking the ball a day early. “It was awesome. I was able to move the ball both ways. With an early lead I just threw strikes and it went in our favor.”

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Duran led off the bottom of the first iing with an infield single up the middle. After senior Daniel Jackson sacrificed him to second base, Tancas also reached on an infield single to the left side. Third baseman Ramsey Romano scored Druan on a ground ball to the right side, and then three consecutive singles from Brock Lundquist, David Banuelos and Luke Rasmussen opened up a 3-0 lead. In the second iing, Tancas drove home shortstop Laine Huffman in with a two-out RBI single through the left side. The Dirtbags scored five of their six runs with two outs, and were 8 for 19 with ruers on base.

“We just played the way we play and that’s aggressive,” Duran said. “We want to push the envelope.”

Duran chased SDSU starter Brett Seeburger (5 2/3 IP, 9 H, 6 ER, 5 K, 2 BB) with a two-out, two-run hit in the sixth iing.

LBSU will send McCaughan (8-2, 2.66) to the mound to face Texas. He has a 12-1 record at Blair Field with a 1.19 ERA and 0.725 WHIP. The wier of that game will be one victory away from advancing to the Super Regional. The Dirtbags haven’t advanced that far since 2004.

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