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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (April 30, 2016)
Page 2B SPORTS East Oregonian TRAIL BLAZERS: Hernandez ties Moyer with win Associated Press Continued from 1B the Clippers lost DeAndre Jordan to what looked like a sprained right ankle before Los Angeles closed to 98-95 on J.J. Redick’s jumper. McCollum’s 3-pointer put Portland up 101-95 with 2:16 left. Again the Clippers clawed back, pulling within 103-101 on Redick’s layup with just under a minute left. Crawford tied it with free throws but Mason Plumlee was fouled by Jeff Green under the basket for free throws to make it 105-103. Crawford missed a 6-foot jumper and Plumlee made the second of two free throws with 1.5 seconds left for the inal margin. Rivers’ 42-foot hurl at the buzzer fell short. “It’s mixed emotions right now,” Rivers said, his left eye swollen shut. “I’m very sad, I’m very disappointed, but I’m also very proud.” Portland will face a Golden State team that is dealing with its own injury issue: Reigning MVP Stephen Curry continues to rehab his sprained right knee. There is no oficial word on when he might return. The Clippers were ulti- mately doomed by untimely injuries to their top two scorers. Paul broke a bone in his right hand in the third quarter of the Clippers’ Game 4 loss at Portland. The Clippers’ nine-time All-Star was averaging 23.8 points and 7.3 assists in the series before he was hurt. He had surgery the next day and the Clippers declared him out indeinitely. In the same game, Blake aggravated the left quad injury that sidelined him for 41 games this season. He was averaging 15 points, 8.8 rebounds and four assists in AP Photo/Craig Mitchelldyer Portland Trail Blazers guard C.J. McCollum, right, drives to the basket past Los Angeles Clippers guard Austin Rivers during the second half of Game 6 of an NBA basketball irst-round playoff series Friday, April 29, 2016, in Portland, Ore. the playoffs. After dropping the irst two, the Blazers took a 3-2 lead with a 108-98 victory at the Staples Center on Wednesday night. Clippers coach Doc Rivers tinkered with his starting lineup in the absence of Paul and Grifin, inserting Crawford, Rivers and Paul Pierce. On Friday, he started Luc Mbah a Moute and Jeff Green, while Crawford and Pierce went to the bench. “This team had more heart than any other team I’ve coached,” the elder Rivers said. The Clippers got another scare midway through the irst quarter when Austin Rivers sustained a cut above his left eye in a collision with Portland’s Al-Farouq Aminu midway through the irst quarter. Rivers returned before the end of the half after getting 11 stitches. Crawford picked up the slack in his absence and had 22 points in the half. But Lillard and McCollum countered with a combined 25 and the Blazers led 50-48 at the break. Redick hit a 3-pointer that put the Clippers up 58-53 early in the third. Aminu and Lillard countered with 3s and neither team could push the margin to more than ive points. BASEBALL: Dawgs exploit PHS errors Continued from 1B grounder hit deep into the hole at shortstop. Devon Roe then reached one of Hermiston’s two errors in the game, allowing Quinn to get to third where he was driven in by a sacriice ly off the bat of Wyatt Morris. But like Bradt had in the second, Robles limited the damage with a strikeout to end the inning. Neither team had a runner reach base in the seventh, but Andrew James made sure that would not be the case in the extra inning as he led off Hermiston’s eighth with a double off the wall in left ield. “It shocked me,” Robles said. “A freshman coming in and hitting that? I mean, it shocked me, it really did.” “It was just a good team effort,” James said. “We’ve been in close games the whole year and that’s just what we’ve been doing. We found a way to pull it off and we’re having a good stretch.” Bradt was poised to get out of the inning, though, after striking out Robles and getting Chase Root to ly out, but Daniel Gossler’s speed down the line kept the inning going when he legged out a grounded to third and forced a hurried throw to irst that bounced out of play and brought James in for the eventual game-winning run. Gossler later scored on a single to center by Sexton, who went 3 for 4 in the game and 5 for 8 on the day. Sexton out-dueled Pendle- ton’s Quinn Cockburn in the irst game and inished with ive strikeouts and two walks while allowing three earned runs on seven hits. Cockburn also went the whole way on the mound and had four strikeouts, three walks and allowed three earned runs on seven hits. It was the Bulldogs out in front of that one as well as Robles led the game off with a irst-pitch single and would later score on an error by the Bucks. Pendleton knotted the score in the second when Morris walked to lead off, took second on a passed ball and then scored on a single by Ryan Russell hit through the right side of the inield. The Bulldogs quickly went back up when James scored on an error in the top of the third, but the Bucks answered in their at-bat with two runs for their only lead of the day. Saturday, April 30, 2016 Herm- iston’s Tyler Sexton throws from the mound in the Bull- dogs’ 5-3 win against the Bucks in the irst game of a double- header Friday in Pendle- ton. Staff photo by E.J. Harris Quinn got on with a one-out seeing-eye single up the middle and scored on Devon Roe’s triple that took an odd hop and rolled all the way to the wall in center. Following an out, Bradt doubled to center to bring Roe in for a 3-2 lead before Sexton could end the rally with a strikeout. Neither team had a runner reach second in the fourth or ifth innings, then Hermiston went up for good with three runs in the sixth. Sexton singled to lead off, and Mitch Brown took his place on the bags. A sacriice moved him to second, then two passed balls brought him around to score for a 3-3 tie. Hayden Edmiston walked, took second on one of those passed balls, was on third after a single by Kody Moss and then scored on the third passed ball of the inning to make it 4-3. “(The Bucks) don’t make a lot of mistakes, and you do have to capitalize,” Hawkins said. “We do have the team where we can hit and run, we can fake bunt steal, we can do those things that put pressure on the other team and we’re not bad at it. So that’s what we’re going to do and that’s our attitude.” Hermiston added its inal run when James singled in Moss two batters later. The wins capped a big week for the Bulldogs, which began with a 9-1 victory over defending state champs Hood River on Tuesday. “It’s amazing,” Robles said of the team’s week. “It gives us a good mentality of we’re doing pretty good right now, and we’re going to inish this year off strong.” “It give us motivation to get better,” James said. “We’ve still got to push, and we can still get better.” For Pendleton, which is 2-7 in its last nine, the losses dropped them three games out of second in a tie for fourth place in the CRC with four games to play. “We’re digging ourselves a hole and we need to stay together as a team,” Cock- burn said. “We need to forget about all that happened here. We hurt ourselves a lot (Friday) and we just need to clean it up before Tuesday and forget about it, and try to get back on track. “We still have a shot to make the playoffs, we just need to stay together and get some conidence and play ohow we know we can. We played good at the start of the season and kind of fell off a little bit. We know we can be there. We know we can be one of the top teams in the state.” The Bucks will get a chance to get back at the Bulldogs on Tuesday when they play a single game at Armand Larive Middle School in Hermiston starting at 4:30 p.m. ——— SEATTLE — Felix Hernandez tied Jamie Moyer’s franchise record for career victories at 145 in the Seattle Mariners’ 1-0 victory over Kansas City on Friday night, the Royals’ fourth straight loss. Seth Smith provided the only run — and the only hit — for the Mariners, leading off the sixth inning with a home run to right off Royals starter Kris Medlen (1-2). Hernandez (2-2), in his 11th season with the Mariners, was appearing in his 339th game, all starts. Moyer appeared in 324 games for Seattle from 1996 to 2006. Hernandez worked 7 2-3 innings, allowing ive hits, walking three and striking out four. He threw a season- high 118 pitches. Steve Cishek pitched the ninth inning to pick up his sixth save in as many opportunities. Center ielder Leonys Martin made a game- ending catch off Salvador Perez, crashing into the wall to preserve the victory. Hernandez has put himself among the best irst-month pitchers ever. Dating to 1913 when ERA MLB Kansas City Seattle 0 1 became an oficial stat in both leagues, Hernandez has the third-best April ERA (minimum 200 innings pitched) at 2.41. He trails only Bob Feller (2.04) and Walter Johnson (2.21). On April 23, Hernandez broke Randy Johnson’s club record for strikeouts. He has 2,170. Medlen struggled early, walking his irst two batters before working out of the jam with three straight outs. He then walked two more in the second, also without damage. He had retired the previous 10 batters before Smith hit an 0-1 changeup just over the wall and right ielder Jarrod Dyson’s outstretched glove. Seattle has won six of 10. STREAKING HOZ Eric Hosmer extended his hitting streak to a career-high 18 games with a second-inning swing- ing-bunt single just to the left of the mound. He is SOFTBALL: Bucks tally 25 hits Continued from 1B was quite a disappoint- ment as the Bulldogs had been playing very solid until Friday, when some defensive mistakes — a combined eight errors — and slow bats combined for an overall rough day. “That was hard,” Herm- iston coach Kate Greenough said. “I didn’t expect us to make as many errors as we did and to take so long to make adjustments at bats. The errors killed us, we walked some (batters) which eventually hut us but we learned a lot for Tuesday.” Morrison set the tone for Pendleton at the top of the Buckaroos lineup, collecting a combined six hits in eight at-bats including her seventh home run of the season — a two-run shot in game one. She also added six RBI and scored three runs. “She’s a great compet- itor and a very tough out and that’s why we have her batting lead-off,” said Pendleton coach Tim Cary of Morrison. “We want her to have as many at-bats as possible ... she gives you power, she can hit singles, doubles, she can steal you some bases, she’s just a tremendous athlete.” Pendleton had a very balanced attack on offense on Friday against Hermiston (13-9, 4-4), as six batters combined for three hits or more on the day leading to 25 total hits. Rylee Gentner had a big day for Pendleton at the plate as well, inishing with four hits, three runs, and three RBI, including a big three-run home run in game one. In the irst game, Pendleton never allowed Hermiston starter Julissa Almaguer to settle in on the mound as six batters came to the plate and ive runs scored before the irst out was made. Almaguer was chased after one inning and was replaced by Breanna Naylor, who inished with seven runs and seven hits allowed in three innings Staff photo by E.J. Harris Hermiston’s Kiersten Miller stretches to make the catch as Pendleton’s Kalan McGlothan runs towards irst base in the Bulldogs’ 11-1 loss to the Bucks in the second game of a doubleheader in Pendleton. with a pair of strikeouts. Hermiston scored its only run in that game in the fourth inning, when Ellery Jones drew a lead-off walk against Pendleton starter Kiersten Murphy and eventually scored on a soft line drive off the bat of Sydney Stefani that landed in shallow right ield to cut the lead to 12-1. The Bull- dogs had a great scoring chance earlier in the game when Mikayla Kopacz led off the second inning with a double and then moved to third base with only one out, but was stranded with two-straight groundouts. In game two, it was Hermiston to strike irst on offense as Jamie Hinkley started the game with a single into left ield off of Pendleton pitcher Lauren Richards and then advanced to second base on an error. Two batters later, Hinkley scored from third on a passed ball to give Hermiston the early 1-0 lead. Hinkley inished the day with three hits to lead the Bulldogs. “I just reminded the girls what it was like to ight and they’ve been ighters all season,” Greenough said. “Usually when you lose somewhere right away it’s real easy to falter the second game but they don’t stop so that was nice.” However, that was all that Richards would give the Bulldogs as she settled into her groove and retired E 2 1 the 15 Bulldogs in order to inish off the game. Richards inished with eight strikeouts, one walk and just two hits allowed over six innings. “The irst innings are always hard because you have to come out and ind your zone, ind (the umpires) zone, and the batter,” Richards said. “But I deinitely got in a rhythm and just did my thing.” The wins for Pendleton did come with some bad news attached, as starting second baseman and cleanup hitter Payton Hergert injured her right knee running to third base in the ifth inning of game two. Cary said after the game that the severity of the injury is not yet known, but they are hoping for the best. “It didn’t look real pretty but we’re going to stay positive until we ind out,” he said. “It’ll be a big loss for us if Payton’s gone.” Pendleton and Herm- iston will meet up again on Tuesday in Hermiston with irst pitch set for 4:30 p.m. at Rocky Heights Elementary. ——— Game 1 R H E HHS 000 10 — 1 4 4 PHS 732 2X — 14 11 0 Almaguer, Naylor (2) and Hinkley. Murphy and Genter. W — Murphy, L — Almaguer. 2B — Kopacz (HHS). Hergert, Gentner, Murphy (PHS). HR — Gentner, Morrison (PHS). Game 2 R H E HHS 100 000 — 1 2 4 PHS 020 171 — 11 14 1 Betz and Hinkley. L. Richards and Gentner. W — L. Richards, L — Betz. 2B — E. Richards, Morrison, McGlo- than, Dick (PHS). Wildhorse Resort & Casino presents the 4th Annual Mammoth Cup Golf Tournament Sunday, May 15 Wildhorse Resort Golf Course Game 1 R H E HHS 101 003 0 — 5 7 1 PHS 012 000 0 — 3 7 3 T. Sexton and S. Gritz. Q. Cockburn and R. Russell. W — Sexton. L — Cockburn. 2B — J. Bradt (PHS). 3B — D. Roe (PHS). Game 2 R H HHS 010 000 02 — 3 9 PHS 000 001 00 — 1 3 R. Robles and S. Gritz. J. Bradt and Q. Cockburn. W — Robles. L — Bradt. 2B — A. James (HHS). hitting .366 during the streak. It also extended his career-high reaching base to 30 straight games, dating to Sept. 27. DEVIL IN THE STATS Mariners manager Scott Servais said in his opinion not only is batting average an overrated statistic “it can be the devil.” He said the more important numbers deal with on-base percentage and run produc- tion. Robinson Cano is his example, hitting just .236 but leading the AL in home runs (8) and RBIs (24). TRAINER’S ROOM Mariners: LHP Charlie Furbush (biceps tendinitis), who began the season the DL, is on a regular throwing routine and could be ready for a rehab assignment. ... RHP Joaquin Benoit (shoulder inlammation) has been on the DL for four days and has not yet begun throwing. That likely will happen this weekend. UP NEXT Royals: RHP Yordano Ventura (2-0, 2.35) is 0-2 in four career starts against Seattle. Mariners: LHP Wade Miley (1-2, 7.04) is 3-1 with a 3.96 ERA in ive career starts against the Royals. FIRST FRIDAYS ARE FREE! 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