Diamond Dawgs Wrap Up Regular Season on Montlake, Host Cal

Thursday, May 18

Seattle, WA

7:05 PM

University of Washington

California

Diamond Dawgs Wrap Up Regular Season on Montlake, Host Cal

May 17, 2023 | Baseball

UW Notes

PROMOTIONS
• Thursday: Dawg Pack Night – First 100 students receive a t-shirt
• Saturday: Senior Day

SEATTLE – One of the hottest teams in all of college baseball, No. 24 Washington concludes the regular season at the Diamond on Montlake, hosting Cal Thursday through Saturday for a three game series at Husky Ballpark.

Saturday's finale will be Senior Day for the Huskies, who will be honoring McKay Barney, Dalton Chandler, Christian Dicochea, Jared Engman, Stu Flesland III, Nick Hovland, Jarred Mazzaferro, Cole Miller, Will Simpson, Michael Snyder and Johnny Tincher before the day's action.

All three games will air on Pac-12 Washington, with Saturday's matchup also being featured on Pac-12 Bay Area and Pac-12 Oregon. Links to live stats are available on the GoHuskies.com schedule page and HuskyStats.com.

DAWG BITES
• Washington hosts the final series of the regular season, welcoming Cal to Husky Ballpark for the weekend.
• The Huskies are coming off of a historic weekend in Eugene, sweeping the Ducks for the first time since 2009.
• The Huskies have won 11 of their last 12 games, including six in a row.
• Washington has surged up to No. 2 in the Pac-12 standings
• With the weekend sweep, UW has rocketed up the RPI rankings from No. 48 to No. 32, a 16-spot jump.
• The Huskies have entered the top-25 polls for the first time all season, coming in as high as No. 24.
• Will Simpson homered twice in Friday's win, retaking the Pac-12 league with 17 for the year. The slugger is tied with Arizona's Chase Davis.
• Washington is the only team in the Pac-12 without a three-game losing streak in 2023.

SERIES HISTORY VS. CAL
Washington and California have met up 90 times all-time, with the Golden Bears owning a slight advantage in the all-time series at 51-39. Cal has had the better of the meetings in recent years, winning seven of the last eight against the Huskies. Washington will be seeking it's first series win over Cal since 2017, taking 2-of-3 games in Seattle.

KEEP 'EM COMING SKIP!
In his first season at the helm of the Husky program, Jason Kelly's Dawgs have racked up 32 wins, the second most wins by a first year head coach in program history. Kelly is seven victories shy of the 39 wins posted by Ken Knutsen in his first campaign in 1993.

EYES ON THE PRIZE
If the Huskies can pull off a second consecutive sweep this weekend against Cal, Washington will secure second place in the Pac-12 standings. It would be the highest league finish for UW since 2016.

POLL POSITION
For the first time all season, Washington will have a number next to its name during the weekend. The Huskies have cracked the top-25 polls for the first time in 2023, coming in at No. 24 by both Baseball America and D1Baseball and No. 25 by the NCBWA.

BIG O
While putting up big numbers all season, Washington's offense was in rare form in its sweep at No. 24 Oregon. The Huskies outscored the Ducks 43-18 in the series. The 43 runs were not only the most scored by one team in a Pac-12 series this season, they were also the most in a league series by Washington since 2005 against Washington State. The Huskies racked up double digit runs in every game of a three-game series for the first time since the 2005 meeting with Wazzu. The Dawgs homered seven times in the series, leaving the yard in the first inning of all three games.

HOW BOUT THEM APPLES?
Taking two-of-three games out on The Palouse, Washington claimed its fifth series over Washington State in the last six meetings with its Apple Cup rivals. Pitching led the way for the Huskies, holding the Cougars to just two runs in all three games. The six total runs allowed were the fewest in a Pac-12 series for UW since surrendering three in a sweep of Arizona in 2018.

LATE SEASON BOOST
After spending the bulk of the season unavailable through injury, true freshman Aiva Arquette has given the much needed boost to the Husky lineup down the stretch. The Hawai'i native has appeared in the last 15 games for UW, including 12 consecutive starts. With just 45 career at bats, Arquette already has five home runs in his limited action.

CASE CLOSED
When righty flamethrower Case Matter is summoned from the Husky bullpen, a Washington victory is nearly a matter of fact. The UW closer has made 13 straight appearances without allowing a run, totaling 18.1 innings. During the stretch, Matter has struck out 25 batters, while issuing just five hits.

LIKE CLOCKWORK
Coby Morales has reached base in 26 consecutive games, the longest streak at UW since MJ Hubbs reached in 39 straight in 2017.

STRIKE EARLY
The Huskies have gotten off to strong starts to games, scoring 50 runs in the first inning and 42 in the second. Washington has outscored its opponents 92-40 in the first two innings of games.

KEEPING IT CLEAN
Washington continues to boast one of the Pac-12's top defenses. The Huskies rank second in the conference with a .978 fielding percentage.

STARTING STRONG
The Dawgs have gotten off to fast starts to innings, having the leadoff hitter to a frame reach 43.9 percent of the time. 89 of the 166 leadoff baserunners have come around to score, including 10-for-12 in the Oregon series.

ON THE CLOCK
29 of Washington's games this season have been completed in under three hours, including six games completed in under two and a half hours.

THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE
Laying down a perfect bunt in the 13th inning Friday night at Stanford, McKay Barney became the first Husky to record a sacrifice bunt this season. The Huskies were the second-to-last team in the nation to lay down a sacrifice bunt, with Texas A&M laying down its first the following day.

STOCK UP
Washington has four players ranked in D1Baseball's most recent position rankings.

UW in D1Baseball's Updated Position Rankings
Kiefer Lord - Starting Pitcher - No. 32
Josh Emanuels - Relief Pitcher - No. 42
Johnny Tincher - Catcher - No. 39
Cam Clayton - Shortstop - No. 22

TAKING OVER TINSEL TOWN
Over the last two seasons, Washington is 11-1 against the Pac-12's two Los Angeles based schools during the regular season, sweeping back-to-back series over USC and taking 5-of-6 games against top-10 ranked UCLA squads.

LORD ALMIGHTY
Washington right-hander Kiefer Lord is one of two players to earn multiple weekly Pac-12 honors this season, joining Oregon's Jace Stoffal.

Lord twirled eight shutout innings in UW's 9-0 victory at No. 9 Stanford to earn the Week 10 award, matching his season-high with 10 strikeouts. The eight innings were tied for the most in an outing in his career and two more than any other game this season. Lord retired the final 16 Cardinal batters he faced. The NorCal native was also named a Player of the Week by Collegiate Baseball.

Throwing six perfect innings with 10 strikeouts against Northern Colorado, Kiefer Lord was named the Week 3 Perfect Game National Pitcher of the Week and Pac-12 Pitcher of the Week. The righty hurler became the first Husky to earn a national pitching award since Joe DeMers in 2018 and the first Husky pitcher to earn a Pac-12 weekly award since Josh Burgmann in 2019.

THAT'S OFFENSIVE
The Dawgs put up astonishing numbers during their four-game series with Northern Colorado. Most notably was the school-record 32 runs scored in the series opener. Those 32 runs are the sixth most scored by one team in an NCAA Division I game this season. The Huskies outscored the Bears 57-12 for the series, batting .388 as a team with 15 doubles, six home runs, 51 RBIs, 26 walks, 16 HBPs and a .513 team on-base percentage.

THE JUCO JUMP
Washington has 10 junior college products on its roster. Four players come from the Washington Community and Technical Colleges system, with four California Community College system products and two players from Arizona's Maricopa County Community College District.

HOMEGROWN DAWGS
Nearly half of the Husky roster, 19 of 39 players overall, are homegrown talents from the state of Washington. Of those 19 local products, 16 hail from the greater Seattle Metropolitan area. Below is a breakdown of the counties UW's Washington natives call home.

UW Washington Natives by County
King County - 14
Clark County - 2
Pierce County - 1
Snohomish County - 1
Spokane County - 1

RUN IT BACK
Washington returns nearly the entirety of its offense from the 2022 season with seven of eight positional starters returning that started more than 40 games, the Dawgs are poised once again to put up big numbers on the scoreboard.

Percentage Return from 2022
• Games Started - 88.5%
• Runs - 87.7%
• Hits - 91.4%
• Doubles - 92.3%
• Triples - 87.5%
• Home Runs - 93.8%
• RBIs - 90.9%
• Walks - 82.5%

2018 OMADAWGS
2023 marks the five-year anniversary of Washington's 2018 team that became the first squad in program-history to reach the College World Series. The Huskies ran through the Conway Regional, sweeping three games against UConn and host Coastal Carolina. UW then took a decisive Super Regional Game 3 at Cal State Fullerton, erasing a one-run deficit in the ninth to force extras and walking off the Titans on Kaiser Weiss' sacrifice fly to score Levi Jordan and send the Dawgs to Omaha.

For more information on the UW baseball team, follow @UW_Baseball on Twitter and Instagram.