Marauders, Canyons engage in slugfest

Marauders fight back, but can’t get past Cougars

LANCASTER — The Antelope Valley College baseball team began its game on Thursday afternoon in such a big hole, the scoreboard at the AVC Baseball stadium couldn’t accurately show such a big score.

College of the Canyons scored 10 runs in the top of the first inning, shown as nine on the scoreboard, and although the Marauders were able to pull within one run in the fifth inning, COC held on for a 23-16 victory at Antelope Valley College.

AVC falls to 10-16 overall and 3-8 and in sixth place in the Western State South Conference, while Canyons (15-10, 8-3) is in third place.

“We’ve got to get people out,” AVC second-year coach Bryan Moses said. “You can’t do that.

“But the one thing that happened today is I saw a lot of guys fighting. We got down early and got it to within one. I was just telling the team ‘I want to be around people like that. I want to be around people that are going fight.’ That’s my positive for the day.”

The Marauders trailed 13-5 before scoring seven runs in the bottom of the fifth inning, on four hits and two COC errors, cutting the deficit to one, 13-12. That would be as close as AVC would get.

“Honestly, it sucks that we lost, but I’m glad our guys kind of put it together,” AVC sophomore Josh Nuno said. “Our last couple of outings have been kind of rough, but I’m glad we kind of came together in this one. We did come back from 10 runs, so I love that. We’re going to continue to grind it and hopefully we’ll get some wins in upcoming games.”

Nuno finished 5-for-5 at the plate with eight RBIs and two runs scored. He hit a three-run double in the fourth inning, a two-run double in the fifth, a sacrifice fly in the sixth to cut the deficit to 16-14 and a two-run single in the eighth.

“That’s really it. We just need to keep fighting,” Nuno said. “We’re a very young team, so it’s easy for us to get discouraged with losing, but being here last year I’ve kind of learned that you never know. Anybody can beat anybody on a given day. If we just play together, I feel that we can beat anybody each day.”

The Marauders had their big fifth inning stopped by a highlight double play started by COC second baseman Charlie Rocca to end the inning.