After Friday’s 7-3 loss to the Bulldogs, #1-seeded Long Beach State will need to win out to avoid elimination in double-elimination regional pool play, and move on to Super Regionals.  The road just got a lot tougher…

It was Dirtbags ace Andrew Liebel who stepped on the mound at Blair Field freshly tagged an All-American. But it was his Fresno State counterpart, Justin Wilson, who made the Dirtbags look like they were swinging newspapers rather than aluminum.
 
Wilson was lights-out in the Bulldogs 7-3 win, painting fastballs on both sides of the plate and mixing in a filthy curveball that no Dirtbag could sit back on.
 
Long Beach State got five hits on the night (three of those off Wilson), while the Bulldogs roughed up the second-team All-American for seven runs on nine hits. The majority of those hits were on pitches Liebel left up in the zone, and a fastball-thriving Bulldogs team crushed his mistakes.
 
Still, the Dirtbags were only down 4-2 heading into the eighth before Fresno State added three more runs to chase Liebel off the mound, in what is likely the senior’s last start in front of the home crowd.
 
Both teams showed gold glove-like defense starting with Dirtbags third-team All-American, Shane Peterson, picking up balls in the dirt like a Hoover vacuum.  Meanwhile the Fresno State squad could have had their own “Web Gems” sequence on ESPN’s “Baseball Tonight.”
 
Big West Player of the Week Brandon Godfrey seemed to be the only Dirtbag who brought his bat to the park, going 2 for 3 with all three Long Beach State RBIs. And even at that, Godfrey was nearly forced to hit.
 
In the third, Godfrey trotted to first base after getting beaned in the elbow with the bases loaded. This would have been a easy RBI except he got called back to the plate by the homeplate umpire because he did not make an attempt to move out the way. Two pitches later, Godfrey redeemed himself by singling to left to bring in two, instead. That was as close as the Dirtbags got to the Bulldogs.
 
The loss sends the Dirtbags into the losers bracket of the four-team, double-elimination NCAA Regionals tournament. Long Beach State is now in a win-or-your-season-is-over situation, that starts today at 2p.m. against Cal. The Golden Bears lost 5-0 to the University of San Diego earlier in the day.
 
The Dirtbags hope to keep their season going and get payback on a Cal squad that swept them up in Berkley earlier this season.