Falcons host Bellingham in playoff opener at Elks tonight

The Kelowna Falcons (28-26) start their best-of-three West Coast League semifinal playoff series at home tonight against the Bellingham, Wash., Bells (35-19).

The opening pitch, at Elks Stadium, is set for 6:35 p.m. between the top two teams in the North Division. Bellingham is the higher seed and will have home-field advantage, hosting the second and, if necessary, third games.

Kelowna is in the playoffs for the third time in the last four years thanks to two straight home wins to close out the WCL regular season.

Those victories over the visiting Wenatchee, Wash., AppleSox were both blowouts, with the Falcons scoring 15-1 and 11-3 routs on Tuesday and Wednesday at Elks Stadium.

Both were also must-win situations for the Falcons, who had dropped that series opener 7-4 on Monday. Kelowna also got the help it needed from the Portland Pickles, who beat the Victoria HarbourCats 10-3 in their finale on Wednesday.

Kelowna and Victoria had identical records entering the final night of the regular season, and Victoria held the tiebreaker had it won against Portland.

The South Division semifinal pits Portland (37-17) against the Corvallis Knights (36-18) in a best-of-three series that also starts tonight in Corvallis, Ore.

Portland needed that win over Victoria to secure home-field advantage versus Corvallis and throughout the playoffs after the Pickles posted the league’s best regular-season record in their inaugural campaign.

In Kelowna’s finale, the Falcons took care of business on the strength of an eight-run third inning to open up a 9-2 lead en route to that 11-3 win over Wenatchee.

For the second straight night, Kelowna’s offence collected 17 hits, led by Dan Pruitt’s second straight three-RBI performance at the plate. Seven different Falcons drove in at least one run on Wednesday night.

Pruitt clubbed his seventh home run of the season over the wall in left field to tie the game at 2-2 before a broken-bat single from Mike Pineiro began a two-out spree that saw the Falcons collect six runs and seven hits over the stretch, including two-run singles off the bats of Jake Fischer, Taylor Wright and Pruitt in that decisive third inning.

The scoring concluded in the fifth inning, as Kelowna product Davis Todosichuk became the seventh Falcon to find the scoresheet with an RBI as he drove in a run on a sacrifice fly.

Kelowna used eight pitchers in the game, with Pruitt earning the win for one inning of relief work.

Kelowna and Bellingham split their season series 3-3, with both teams winning twice at home.

The Falcons won their season-opening homestand with 5-4 and 5-1 wins on June 1 and June 3, while losing 8-2 on June 2.

Then, in Bellingham, the Falcons won that opener 10-4 on Aug. 3 but lost by the same score the next night and also dropped the finale 4-2 on Aug. 5.