Baseball's weekly awards belong to the Northwest
SAN FRANCISCO— It was a Northwest sweep of baseball's weekly awards as WASHINGTON STATE's Joe Pistorese was named the Pac-12 Pitcher of the Week and WASHINGTON's Braden Bishop was named the Pac-12 Player of the Week.
Bishop (San Carlos, Calif./St. Francis HS) reached base safely in 12 of 14 plate appearances in the Huskies' sweep at Stanford this past weekend. The .857 on-base percentage was paced by a 3-for-3 afternoon on Saturday with three runs and two RBIs and a Sunday finale of 3-for-3 with another two runs. Bishop scored six runs in the seriess, was 6-for-8 at the plate, walked four times, was hit twice and stole two bases. At one point he reached base safely in 10-straight at-bats. Bishop leads the Huskies (18-12) with a .344 average, 11 steals and a .556 slugging percentage.
Across the Bay at Cal, Pistorese (Kalispell, Mont./Flathead HS) mastered a four-hit shutout of the Bears, striking out six and walking one last Friday. Hitting the strike zone with 72 percent of his pitches, the junior lefthander scattered four singles and allowed just two runners as far as second base. The 4-0 win was the first of two WSU wins over the No. 12 Bears. Pistorese is 4-3 with a 2.68 ERA in eight starts this year, which includes three complete games for the Cougars (14-16).
STANDINGS: UCLA (10-2) leads Arizona State (9-3) by 1.0 game and USC (7-2) by 1.5 games… Cal (8-4) and Arizona (7-4) sit in fourth and fifth place.
NATIONAL RANKINGS: UCLA is up to No. 3 in Collegiate Baseball, followed by the Sun Devils (No. 8), USC (No. 10), California (No. 14), Oregon State (No. 20, 22-9) and Arizona (No. 24, 22-9). In Baseball America, USC (25-6) is No. 6 followed by No. 7 UCLA (23-6), No. 9 Arizona State (21-8) and No. 23 California (21-9)
THIS WEEK'S MIDWEEKS: Stanford and Pacific battle in Stockton on Monday and at Sunken Diamond on Tuesday… on Tuesday, Oregon is at Portland, UC Santa Barbara is at USC, Arizona State is at UNLV, Gonzaga is at Washington State and Cal is at Fresno State.
PREVIOUS WINNERS
Players of the Week
Feb. 16 - Scott Kingery, ARIZ
Feb. 23 - KJ Harrison, OSU
March 2 - Chris Keck, UCLA
March 9 - Dante Flores, USC
March 16 - Chris Paul, CAL
March 23 - Lucas Erceg, CAL
March 30 - Ty Moore, UCLA
April 6 – Braden Bishop, WASH
Pitchers of the Week
Feb. 16 - Ryan Burr, ASU
Feb. 23 - Conor Harber, ORE
March 2 - Noah Bremer, UW
March 9 - Andrew Moore, OSU
March 16 - Mitch Hart, USC
Mar. 23 - Drew Rasmussen, OSU
March 30 - Jayson Rose, UTAH
April 6 – Joe Pistorese, WSU