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What started as a potential fluke for Long Beach State Baseball- taking two out of three against the UCLA Bruins earlier this month- has turned into a trend and a team demanding respect along with notice on the national stage. The Dirtbags are not only getting every bit of the nations’ attention but if they keep this up they may just end up playing a few extra games in 2014. Following the Dirtbags third consecutive series win over a top 25 team – UCLA (at the time), UC Santa Barbara (at the time) and #5 Cal Poly – Long Beach State finally took care of business of a “tweener” game – this time another Top 25 team. 

Wednesday night the Dirtbags (21-21 Overall, 7-5 Conference) hosted #23 Pepperdine University (31-10) and behind another solid outing by pitcher Ryan Millison – 7 innings 5 K’s, 0 BB – CSULB picked up their third consecutive win and second consecutive shutout. In fact the Dirtbags pitching staff has not allowed a run through 21 innings. 

It has been a miraculous turn around since the first half of the season. A team without any type of identity now seems to have found themselves and looks completely different than the group of guys who took the field a few weeks ago. 

Up until Wednesday nights win over #23 Pepperdine, Long Beach State had gone 0-6 in games that fell between 3-games series including the last two since their run of three consecutive series wins over Top 25 teams began back on April 4. In other words, CSULB is now cleaning up the mistakes that were haunting them throughout the year. The season is still far from over, but with the recent series win over #5 Cal Poly (37-6) – ending a 12-game winning streak for the Mustangs in the process – the Dirtbags confidence has to be at its peak. Over the last few weeks the pitching staff has grown from a 2-headed monster with Andrew Rohrbach (4-1, 2.38 ERA) and Josh Frye (4-0, 1.13 ERA), too a 3-headed monster with the inclusion of Millison – 3-1, 1.35 ERA.

The three standout pitchers are anchoring a pitching staff that holds a 3.16 overall ERA. The pitching will have to continue to be stellar with the story line not taking a break for the remainder of the year. This weekend Long Beach State hosts another tough test with a 3-game set with Cal State Fullerton. Although the Titans have dropped out of the Top 25, they were still preseason ranked as the #1 overall team. A few hard breaks and a number of mistakes have devastated the Titans regular season, but the product on the field is still the team that caught the nations attention before the 2014 season began. Fortunately the Dirtbags are at Blair Field for this series, where they – at this point – seem to be untouchable. The series kicks off Friday at 6p. 

Student-Athlete of the Week: Junior pitcher Nick Sabo earned this weeks Student-Athlete honors after leading the Dirtbags to a series-clinching win over  then #1 Cal Poly – locking down to nations best offense over 6.2 innings of work, allowing only two hits while striking out two in CSULB 1-0 win. 

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