OLIVER KIMOKEO | sports editor

Cutspec's moonshot homerun caps a GSAC sweep over Concordia.

A doubleheader sweep against Concordia on Feb. 16 enabled the Cougars to continue their dominance of the GSAC. APU has an active 17-game winning streak in home GSAC games dating back to a defeat to Fresno Pacific on February 14, 2007. Sixth season head coach Paul Svagdis also collected his 100th GSAC victory.

Last season, the Cougars had a record-shattering 32 victories against the GSAC slate. Their 2007 conference winning percentage of .889 sets up a tough task for the stalwart Cougars to replicate. If there is a justifiable indication which may be found in the opening five conference contests, it’s that the Cougars are up to the scutwork of preserving their status as GSAC frontrunners.

“This year, we’re still a good team. We think we’re just as good as last year,” sophomore first baseman Brice Cutspec said. “It’s just a different kind of game. We need to get set in the process, trap the ball and stick to it. This year, we’re playing more of a small game to a power game.”

Only one blemish accentuates the otherwise pure prelude of a stellar 10-1 overall record—the Cougars fell victim to a 8-2 onslaught courtesy of Point Loma Nazarene in the opening GSAC game on Feb. 9. Despite starting the conference schedule before getting to test the waters against a non-conference cluster of tenderfoot games, the Cougars are all that and a bag of potato chips.

“We started conference a lot earlier than we have in the past,” Svagdis said. “Usually, we’re getting about eight games under our belt before we open the conference. A lot of the teams have had only three and four games and then you’re right into playing the best teams in the conference and maybe even in the country.”

Delicately dancing on a wheel of fortune would have a catastrophic impression for lesser squads but the Cougars have ridden the locomotion of such flux to that of an amusing joyride. A 14-7, 7-6 twin bill victory over the Eagles ended a stretch of seven games in eight days for APU.

The Cougars took control of their GSAC intermission on Feb. 11-12 with a double feature of non-conference games as APU served Whittier and Cal State Los Angeles with 11-2 and 15-2 rout respectively. On Feb. 13, The Master’s revealed a different shade of brick on the Cougars’ palette of colors and APU responded with an artistic mosaic unmasked through a nine-inning walk-off hit drawn by junior left fielder Stephen Gillette.

“It’s been a positive week in that we’re getting a lot of at-bats,” Svagdis said. “We’re getting to throw a lot of our pitchers so our guys are getting experience.”

In game one of the Concordia doubleheader, junior pitcher Garrett Hodges was given free reign to rule the mound for the Cougars. In his longest start of the young 2008 season so far, Hodges struck out six Concordia batters and held off the Eagles in a defensive 2-2 standstill going into the bottom of the sixth inning.

Once Hodges stepped off the mound, the Cougar offensive fireworks blasted off in a dazzling display worthy of Fourth of July. Junior right fielder Drew Evan broke-out with a booming grand-slam to polish off a seven-run explosion which gave the Cougars a 9-2 lead into the last third of the game. Both teams added five runs each in the final third and the Cougars won 14-7.

“I didn’t think we had a very good hitting plan early in the game,” Svagdis said. “I got a little frustrated with us offensively after the first game even though we scored 14 runs. It felt like we weren’t sticking to a good aggressive offensive hitting plan. We want to get a little better at swinging at pitches in the zone.”

For game two, it was no sunshine day and absolutely no Brady Bunch for the Jonny Bravo fanclub. The junior pitcher allowed four Eagle homeruns which reminded the Cougars why they shouldn’t let Concordia play power ball in their own house.

After falling behind by deficits of 3-2 in the third inning and 5-4 in the fourth inning, the Cougars were hearing anything but that good time music. But they kept on grooving, did it right and flew down the highway in their makeshift Model T.A.

“Bravo is one our best guys,” Svagdis said. “He’s going to have those days when he’s getting squeezed behind the plate and the umpire was not giving him much. But he squeezed both sides and the ball was playing in the bambox so the ball is flying out of the yard. We came back, scored the runs and we played defense when we needed to. I thought we did well responding to a challenge.”

One of the offensive highlights of the Cougars’ comeback was a moonshot of a hit from Cutspec. In what was expected to be an exteremly high fly-ball to foul territory ended up being a go-ahead solo homerun which barely landed outside the right-field fence.

“I thought it was a foul ball and the wind just totally blew it back over. I was turning around and getting back to the box but then I saw the outfielder drifiting back and it went through,” Cutspec said.

After the Cougars turned a 5-4 deficit into a 7-5 lead going into the sixth inning, junior Kirk Nieuwenhuis came to the mound for a save opportunity. Nieuwenhuis played three different positions in the doubleheader: center fielder, first basemen, and relief pitcher.

“Just being able to do everything is what I do,” Nieuwenhuis said.

Nieuwenhuis effectively held off a Concordia resurgence in his two innings of relief and earned his second save of the season.

“It felt good to get the save,” Nieuwenhuis said. “We got the first one and we didn’t have as much energy as we would have liked for the second one. We knew this one was going to be a dogfight but we finished it off.”

Coach Svagdis credited the doubleheader sweep to wearing down the Concordia attack.

“Hitting in this whole game is a matter of attrition and wearing down your opponent. Our hitters are doing a good job of hanging in there,” Svagdis said. “It happened all week. There were tight games, tight games, and then bam, an inning erupted for us. Our guys are trying to do the things the right way offensively. They know baseball is a funky game like that and it ebs and flows. It’s just about hanging in there and not getting negative with yourself.”

Even though the Cougars have attained a No. 2 NAIA ranking and a lead in the GSAC standings, Svagdis will not let the team be complacent in their approach to baseball.

“I was frustrated with them for taking the game of baseball for granted in that when you get up by some runs, we sit back and we’re not willing to go out and continue to push runs across the board,” Svagdis said. “At the end, I felt the group was just ho-hum. I felt like we needed to be more intense. So I let them know that in a very intense way.”