Arizona baseball demolishes Washington State for eighth straight win

It’s realistic to say the Arizona Wildcats may never lose again this season. But that might be a good thing, since it would no doubt mean they failed to make it into the NCAA tournament despite their late-season surge.

Arizona’s push for the postseason continued Thursday night with another dominating offensive performance, clobbering last-place Washington State 21-4 in Pullman in the opener of a three-game series, the last of the regular season. The win was the eighth in a row for the Wildcats (30-24, 13-14), who have won 11 of 12 to go from nowhere near the playoff picture to squarely on the NCAA bubble.

Baseball America had Arizona as one of the last teams into the field in its weekly projection on Wednesday, with D1Baseball.com listing the Wildcats as one of the first five out a day earlier.

That was before the Wildcats smacked out 24 hits against the Cougars (13-40-1, 3-24-1) and scored three or more runs in five different innings.

Donta Williams was 4 for 4 with three RBI and four runs scored, Austin Wells had three hits with a home run and five RBI and Nick Quintana had a homer and drove in four for Arizona, which has outscored its opponents 106-34 during its win streak and 167-65 over the past 12 games.

Pitcher Randy Labaut improved to 8-3 on the season with seven solid innings, striking out seven while allowing three runs and nine hits.

Arizona’s RPI sits at 46 after Thursday. It’s not likely to rise much more because of WSU’s low ranking (218) but a sweep of the Cougars would still be huge because it would put the Wildcats over .500 in Pac-12 play. A losing league mark in 2018 contributed to their NCAA tourney snub.

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