AWC baseball sweeps 1st-place South Mountain

Lady Mats swept by EAC in home finale

The Arizona Western baseball team will enter the upcoming Region I tournament riding an 11game winning streak and fresh off a sweep over the regular-season conference champs.

The Matadors (43-13 overall, 27-9 ACCAC) beat South Mountain 8-5 and 3-0 in Phoenix on Saturday to close the regular season. The Cougars (4313, 30-6) had gone the entire season without suffering consecutive losses prior to Saturday. In AWC’s 8-5 win in the opener, Carlos Arellano (2-for-3, 2 RBIs), Spencer Packard (2-for-4, 2 RBIs) and Daylan Nanny (2-for-4, double) had multi-hit games while Sean Roby hit his conferenceleading 16th homer of the season. Manny Perez earned the win on the mound, allowing three runs on four hits with seven strikeouts over 4 1/3 innings.

Ramon Miranda and Fabian Muniz combined for a seven-hit shutout in the second game. Miranda went the first five innings to earn the win, while Muniz pitched the final four to pick up the save.

Justin Greene (2-for-3) and Robbie Wilkes (2-for-4) accounted for four of AWC’s seven hits in the 3-0 victory.

The Matadors will open the Region I playoffs as the No. 2 seed with a semifinals best-of-three series against No. 3 Central Arizona (45-11, 25-11) in Yuma on Thursday. First pitch is scheduled for 2 p.m.

JUCO SOFTBALL Lady Mats swept in home finale

The Arizona Western softball team ended the regular season on a