Oregon St. and Oregon Start The Civil War Series

#6 Oregon St. (41-8, 20-4) at #10 Oregon (42-11, 19-5) / 6 PM / PK Park, Eugene, OR / KEJO 1240 AM & KPOJ 620 AM

Game Notes / Gametracker / Live Stream

(The Original Live Stream is being used for coverage of the NCAA Softball Regionals, which experienced a rain delay. An alternate signal is up for tonight's baseball game.)

Oregon St. and Oregon kick off the Pac-12 conference portion of this year's Civil War series tonight at PK Park, and the weekend series will go a long way towards deciding the conference championship.

Oregon won the first battle of this season's Civil War 6-3 back on April 9 at Goss Stadium, when Aaron Payne broke open a tie game in the top of the 9th inning, driving a 2 RBI triple down the right field line, and subsequently scoring on Ryon Healy's fly ball.

Home field has mattered a lot recently in the Civil War, as the team with the 3 game home conference series has won the season series 4 games to 1 in each of the last 2 seasons. The Ducks already having broke through on the road bodes well for them, unless the Beavers can break recent trends.

Statistically, Oregon St. enters the game with the slightly better pitching staff (a major testament to the Beavers starters) and also a better offense, but Oregon has defended better.

Oregon enters the series on an 8 game winning streak, having swept 3 game weekend road series at Washington St. and Ohio St. before beating visiting Gonzaga twice this week. The Ducks have swept their last 3 weekend series, having also beaten Stanford 3 times in a row.

Oregon St. is on an even longer, 12 game winning streak, and is 16-2 since losing that loss to Oregon, perfect save for the soggy Saturday double header they dropped at Washington. The streak includes weekend sweeps of USC and California in addition to last weekend's at Stanford.

Oregon will send sophomore LHP Tommy Thorpe (5-4, 2.62) out to start the game.

Thorpe worked 2 outs into the 7th inning in last week's series opening 12 inning affair last Saturday that the Ducks finally won 3-1, but didn't figure in the decision. Thorpe allowed 7 hits and 1 run, with 7 strikeouts, and only 1 walk.

Thorpe's last conference outing the week before in Pullman was also a no decision. Thorpe again worked into the 7th inning, and allowed 7 hits that Friday night, though he did give up 3 runs, in a game Oregon won 5-3 after scoring twice in the 9th inning.

Oregon St. will counter with senior LHP Matt Boyd (10-2, 2.04). Boyd also worked into the 7th inning in picking up his 10th win of the year last Friday, out-dueling projected MLB draft #1 pick Mark Appel in the Beavers' 7-3 win at Stanford.

Here's tonight's complete OSU lineup:

Tyler Smith-SS

Andy Peterson-2B

Michael Conforto-LF

Dylan Davis-RF

Ryan Barnes-DH

Danny Hayes-1B

Jake Rodriguez-C

Kavin Keyes-3B

Max Gordon-CF

Andy_Wooldridge@yahoo.com