Baseball: Vikings wrap up third straight conference title with 7-4 win at El Camino

The Long Beach City College Vikings are champions of the South Coast Conference for the third straight season as LBCC secured the outright title with a 7-4 win at El Camino College on Friday. Long Beach closed out the regular season with a 24-12 overall record and 16-5 mark in SCC play.

Also with the conference's top seed into the postseason, the Vikings have secured an opening-round playoff series at home on May 6-7 against an opponent to be determined at Sunday's Southern California coaches meeting.

Needing a win or a loss by second-place Cerritos College on Friday to wrap up the outright championship, the Vikings were able to bounce back from a tough loss to El Camino on Thursday.

Friday's contest opened as a pitcher's duel as LBCC starter Tai Tiedemann (Poly HS) and El Camino's Taylor Rashi allowing just one run each over the first seven innings. But in the eighth, the Vikings rallied for six runs to blow the game open. Freshman Vincent Byrd II (Sacramento, CA/El Camino HS) delivered the knockout punch with a go-ahead three-run home run to center field. Steven Nuno (Warren HS) and Jacob Gotta (Canyon Crest Academy) added RBI singles while Tristin Chamberlain (Millikan HS) hit a sacrifice fly to score Tanner Moore (Irvine HS).

Long Beach held a commanding 7-1 lead in the ninth, but reliever Evan May (Oxford Academy) ran into trouble as he allowed three runs to score. The Warriors eventually had the tying run up to bat with two outs, but May got Noah Barba to ground out to end the game and set off the Vikings' celebration.

Tiedemann went eight innings and allowed just one run and six hits. He struck out six and walked one while improving to 7-2 on the season. Byrd went 2 for 5 with 3 RBI to lead LBCC at the plate.

The Warriors finished in third place in the final SCC standings with a 13-8 record and are 24-12 as they look to earn an at-large berth into the playoffs.