Huskies cap off regular season against Arizona

The UW baseball team will face the Arizona Wildcats in its final series of the regular season, which starts tonight at 6:30 at Husky Ballpark.

The Huskies (14-8 Pac-10, 28-24-1 overall) are sitting in a tie for second place with the Stanford Cardinal and trail league-leading USC (14-7) by a single game. Arizona State is still in contention at fourth place, only two games behind the Trojans.

If USC falters over the weekend in its three-game series against UCLA and Washington wins the Pac-10 outright, the Huskies will automatically gain a berth in the 64-team NCAA tournament. However, if USC and Washington end the season in a tie for first place, USC will automatically head to the NCAA tournament since the Trojans won the season series against Washington earlier this year.

According to coach Ken Knutson, the NCAA normally takes four Pac-10 teams to the tournament, so even if the Trojans take the tie-breaker, Washington still has a chance of competing in the tournament.

In 1997 and 1998, Washington won back-to-back Pac-10 championships and has not won a conference title since.

"We're ready to play," Knutson said. "I'm not really worried about that. I have to be worried that they're not too excited and that they just concentrate on the game that's being played, and not the big picture."

In their most recent series against Oregon State, the Huskies got two home runs from freshman catcher Aaron Hathaway. Senior Michel Done and junior Tyler Davidson also went deep, while freshman first basemen Kyle Larsen and junior shortstop Tila Reynolds both recorded three hits apiece in game one against the Beavers.

Senior Shawn Cohn (10-4, 3.17 ERA) will start tonight in pursuit of his 11th win of the season, followed by junior Sean White (5-2, 4.87 ERA) tomorrow at 1 p.m.

Knutson has several potential starters for game three. He could place the ball in his third man in the starting rotation, junior Clay Johnson, or opt for senior lefty Zack Daniels or freshman David Dowling.

Sean Rierson (7-4, 4.60 ERA) is the expected starting pitcher for Arizona, followed by Joe Little (6-5, 5.12) and Marc Kaiser (5-4, 5.77). This trio of Wildcats is averaging better than six innings per start, and Little leads Arizona with 75 strikeouts.

In its most recent Pac-10 match-up, Arizona (8-13, 30-22) dropped two of three against Washington State.

"It's a very tight race," Knutson said. "It's very feasible that Arizona State could walk away with the title. Anything can happen."