Cassel fans 15 in win

IRVINE ? At least once every inning, the chant sprang from the UC Irvine dugout, at once taunting UC Santa Barbara hitters and trumpeting the repetitive dominance of Anteater pitching ace Justin Cassel.

“Finish him,” a line of reserves kept singing in two-strike unison Friday, urging the junior right-hander to set yet another Gaucho down on strikes.

Cassel complied a career-high 15 times to help UCI earn a 12-2 Big West Conference baseball victory in front of 463 at Anteater Ballpark.

It was the first Big-West-Conference series-opening win in four tries for the Anteaters, who had not won on Friday night since topping Oral Roberts at home March 16.

Cassel did everything but finish the job himself, working 8 2/3 innings, before 137 pitches, some shaky defense and a golf-ball-size knot emerging from his right shin prompted Anteater Coach Dave Serrano to summon reliever Chris Lopez for the final out.

“That was a pretty special performance,” Serrano said of Cassel’s outing, his first win in four conference starts to up his record to 4-7 this season.

“I thought he was pretty good last week at Cal Poly [San Luis Obispo, a hard-luck 2-1 loss in which he threw his second straight complete game], but he didn’t get treated right.

“He was throwing his fastball on both sides of the plate [Friday] and his curveball was the best I’ve seen it in weeks. And, he was able to establish a changeup over the plate, which hasn’t been a strength with him. When he has stuff like that, he has a chance to tie up any team.”

The Anteaters backed Cassel with three first-inning runs, then added another in the second, three more in the sixth and five in the eighth.

UCI’s 14 hits were its most since getting 17 in a 13-inning win over USC on March 7, a span of 20 games.

The Anteaters (23-16, 4-6 in conference) also played solid defensively. They turned a 6-4-3 double play in the fourth inning and left fielder Gary Dudrey made a leaping catch before banging into the wall for the final out of the seventh.

But Cassel was the story.

“I’ve been off to kind of a slow start this season, so it feels good to get this win under my belt,” Cassel said. “Hopefully, we can line up a few more of these over my next five or six starts.”

UCI catcher Aaron Lowenstein, also Cassel’s roommate, said despite Cassel’s sporadic struggles on the mound this season, the team has never lost faith in him.

“He’s such a competitor, he has been hard on himself,” Lowenstein said. “But he’s the kind of guy the team wants out there, because he’s is the type of guy who is not going to be OK with being just OK.”

Lowenstein said he knew early on that Cassel was more than OK Friday.

“He was unbelievable,” Lowenstein said. “He’s pretty good all the time, but after the second or third inning, I was like: ‘Here’s my boy. That’s what I’m talking about.’”

Cassel struck out the side in the sixth and the eighth and fanned two in the first and the third. He whiffed at least one in every other inning. He issued his first walk to lead off the ninth and surrendered only one earned run. He threw 92 strikes.

Cassel was hit on the right shin by a comebacker with one out in the ninth, but pounced on the ball and retired the hitter at first. Serrano came out to check on him, but left him in.

“I overextended him to try to get him a complete game, because I thought he had earned that right,” Serrano said.

But after Tyler Vaughn booted a grounder for an error on the subsequent at-bat, Serrano brought in Lopez, who struck out the next hitter for the final out.

Offensively, Dudrey and Ben Orloff had three hits apiece, while Orloff, Cody Cipriano, Taylor Holiday and Jaime Martinez each drove in two runs.

Dudrey, who upped his team-leading batting average to .382, was three for three with three runs and three stolen bases.

The series continues tonight at 6, with the finale set for Sunday at 1 p.m.