The Portland Pilots men’s baseball team will begin their conference schedule with a three-game series against the Loyola Marymount University Lions in Los Angeles, starting Friday, March 20. The games will be held at Page Stadium, with live stats and video available through PortlandPilots.com and ESPN+.
This matchup marks the start of West Coast Conference play for both teams. The Pilots enter the series after a strong performance last week, having secured a series win over the UConn Huskies and defeating the No. 17 Oregon State Beavers. According to the team’s report, “The Pilots split the doubleheader on Saturday and took the Sunday game 5-3 to close out the series win. They are now 8-2 in their last 10 games and have won the last three series they’ve played.” Several players contributed notable performances, including Dakota Chun, who hit .333 over three games with his first career home run.
Pitching matchups for the weekend include Trey Newmann (2-1, 4.79 ERA) for Portland facing Jonah Johnson (2-2, 4.45 ERA) for LMU on Friday; Logan Anderson (1-1, 4.22 ERA) versus Adam Behrens (2-2, 4.78 ERA) on Saturday; and Will Labonte (1-0, 1.44 ERA) against Avery Laine (1-3, 9.61 ERA) on Sunday.
The Pilots currently lead their conference in several pitching categories such as earned run average (ERA), walks plus hits per inning pitched (WHIP), walks allowed per nine innings, and win-loss percentage. Nationally, they rank seventeenth in ERA and forty-fifth in WHIP this season.
Last year, Portland finished fifth in conference play with a record of 22-30 overall and qualified for the West Coast Conference Tournament for a fourth consecutive year but fell to LMU in their only tournament game. Head coach Geoff Loomis is entering his eleventh season at Portland and has accumulated more than two hundred career wins with the program.
LMU enters this weekend’s series with a record of seven wins and sixteen losses so far this season. Last year they finished fourth in conference play and were picked to finish fifth this year.
