Irvine Hardball Tournament : Tustin Routs Capistrano Valley

Tustin High School, which scored 31 runs in its first two Irvine Baseball Assn. and Times Orange County Hardball Tournament games, didn’t let up Friday as the Tillers beat Capistrano Valley, 15-3, in the semifinals at UC Irvine.

Bill Courtney, who struck out nine and allowed six hits, drove in three runs on two hits, and Ryan Relph added four hits and scored three times.

Tustin (12-1 this summer), will play Mater Dei in the championship game at 4 p.m. Sunday. The Tillers took a 3-0 lead in the top of the first inning on Courtney’s two-run single and Relph’s run-scoring base hit.

Ben Strack had a two-run single and Jim Reider and Ben Munoz each had run-scoring hits in the second when Tustin scored six runs to extend its lead to 9-0.

Capistrano Valley (17-7) scored twice in the bottom of the second on Ian Levine’s RBI single and Jim Young’s sacrifice fly. The Tillers added four runs in the third on Dan Baker’s three-run double and Reider’s second run-scoring single of the game.

Capistrano Valley and University will battle for third place Sunday at 1 p.m. at UCI.

Mater Dei 16, University 3--Mater Dei scored nine runs in the sixth inning and pitcher Jason Dietrich gave up just two hits in five innings. Lionel Hastings drove in three runs on two hits, one of them a two-run single in the sixth.

Notes

In losers’ bracket games, Servite 4, Newport Harbor 1 (10 innings); Canyon 3, El Toro 1; Irvine 6, Orange 2. . . . In losers’ bracket games today, Woodbridge plays Foothill at 9:30 a.m., Estancia plays Laguna Hills at 12:30 p.m. at UC Irvine. The winners of those two games play at 7 p.m. at Irvine. In losers’ bracket games at University High, Newport Harbor plays El Toro at 10 a.m. and Servite plays Canyon at 1 p.m. At Christ College Irvine in two more losers’ bracket games, Huntington Beach plays Corona del Mar at 10 a.m. and the losers of the Woodbridge-Foothill and Estancia-Laguna Hills games play at 5 p.m. In addition to those games, the Collegiate Summer Baseball Assn. All-Stars will face the Metro League All-Stars at 4 p.m at UCI.