OC Coyotes set for defending-champ PBA Dawgs tonight

Davis Todosichuk hit a leadoff home run to spark the Okanagan College Coyotes to a 7-5 victory over the Vancouver Island University Mariners in their second game at the Canadian College Baseball Conference championship tournament.

Todosichuk, a Kelowna minor baseball product, also collected three hits and drove in the insurance run in the eighth inning of the game at Elks Stadium that began on Thursday evening and lasted four innings before the rain came down hard. The two teams resumed play at 10 a.m. today in the fifth inning.

Coming off an 8-7 loss to the University of the Fraser Valley Cascades on Wednesday, the Coyotes are 1-1 in the six-team tournament and will play their third round-robin game — against the defending-champion Prairie Baseball Academy Dawgs — today beginning at 7:30 p.m. at Elks Stadium.

The game will be a rematch of last year’s championship game at Elks in which the Dawgs scored two runs with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning to win their sixth straight CCBC title.

Noah Wood-Jolivet will start on the mound for the Coyotes today, aiming to at least match his performance of April 23 in Lethbridge when he led OC to a 9-3 regular-season win over PBA. The Toronto product, with a good command of four pitches, including his go-to changeup, limited PBA to four hits and two earned runs over six innings for work.

Despite the quick foray to start the game on Thursday against VIU, the Coyotes had to claw their way to victory.

The Mariners rained down on OC with five runs of their own in the top of the fourth inning, but Jared Frew hit a run-scoring double to put the Coyotes up for good in the bottom half of the frame.

Zac Yandeau started the game on the hill for the hosts and was cruising until the five-run fourth inning. Aidan Mordecai took over the pitching duties for OC in the fifth inning today and picked up the win by shutting out VIU over four innings. He allowed just two hits and struck out four. Trevor Brigden closed the game with one inning of work in which he gave up a hit and struck out one.

The Coyotes will complete round-robin play on Saturday beginning at 1 p.m. against the University of Calgary Dinos, who are winless in four games in The PBA Dawgs, regular-season champs with a 21-3 record, also sit at the top of the CCBC championship tournament standings with a 3-0 record, while the Fraser Valley Cascades and Thompson Rivers WolfPack of Kamloops are at 2-1, followed by the Coyotes. VIU sits a 0-2 and the U of C is 0-3.

Semifinal play begins on Saturday at 7:30 p.m., with the first-place team in round-robin play meeting the fourth-place finishers. The other semi goes at 10 a.m. on Sunday between the second- and third-place teams.

The 2017 CCBC championship will be decided beginning at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday.