BASEBALL: WAVES EXTEND WINNING STREAK PEPPERDINE 8, LMU 2.

Byline: Heather Gripp Staff Writer

Dane Ball realizes his career as a college baseball player is quickly coming to an end. So wasting a third of each game is not something the Pepperdine senior outfielder wants.

Like the rest of the Waves, Ball has been focusing on reaching base with two outs. Ball's career-high four hits Monday included three two-out hits to lead Pepperdine to an 8-2 victory over Loyola Marymount at Page Stadium. The victory completed a three-game sweep of the defending West Coast Conference champions and gave the first-place Waves their seventh consecutive win.

``It's awesome,'' Ball said. ``I've only got 15, 20 games left to play and then the postseason, so I'm trying to enjoy it as much as I can. Every game's got to count.''

Ball, batting ninth in the order, broke the game open with a two-out triple to right-center field in the fifth inning. The hit scored Jared Pitney and Daniel Haren to give Pepperdine an 8-1 lead.

``We've worked on that a lot in practice, the situational hitting like that,'' Ball said. ``It's something when we were really struggling, we weren't getting a lot of clutch hits with two outs. That was the big difference for us. We came up with two outs and we really made it hurt. That was big.''

The Waves (27-12, 15-3), who had lost eight of 13 before their current winning streak, had six two-out hits and reached base 11 times in the final third of innings.

``It was encouraging,'' Pepperdine coach Frank Sanchez said. ``I know just because you talk about something, it doesn't mean it's going to work, but we've talked about that a lot. We still have a lot of inning left with two outs. We've talked about it in the weeks prior to this. Some teams - not the good ones - they shut it down when there's two outs. They go, 'Oh, man.' We got in that rut a little bit I thought, so we started to discuss that we've still got a third of our inning left to go with two out.''

Among the Waves' other two-out hits were a solo home run by Rock Mills in the second inning and a two-RBI single by Tony Garcia in the third inning.

LMU (15-28, 4-14) had few scoring opportunities regardless of the number of outs. Pepperdine starter Greg Ramirez (3-1) was perfect through the first two innings and allowed eight hits and one walk in eight innings. The sophomore right-hander was making just his third start of the season.

``That was very clutch,'' Sanchez said of Ramirez's pitching. ``Very nice.''

The Lions' only runs came on solo home runs by Josh Whitesell in the fourth and sixth innings. They were the first two home runs of the freshman's career.

Jack Brooks was the only other LMU player with multiple hits. He entered the game in the fifth inning and went 3 for 3.

The Lions started to rally when they put runners on first and third with one out in the third inning, but a double play ended the inning without a run scoring. LMU loaded the bases in the seventh inning; Ramirez got out of the jam by striking out C.J. Wilson.