Coming into the final day of the Class 3A baseball season Saturday, Casey Miller and his University baseball team had no shortage of options.
Losing wasn’t one of those options.
The top-seeded Bulldogs emphatically powered past No. 6 D’Evelyn, 5-0, in the finals of the John W. Haefeli state tournament at Butch Butler Field.
The victory broke a streak of four consecutive years in which University was the runner-up in the tournament, dating back to 2022.
“It’s been really tough, and there are a lot of the guys (on those runner-up teams) that are here right now with us — the Will Korbys, the Coel Croissants, the Kaleb Tejadas,” said Miller, who is in his ninth year coaching the Bulldogs.
“They’re the ones that built the foundation for this. They deserve this just as much as the next team. … Heartbreak, heartbreak, heartbreak, but then, I’m really glad we finally got one. It’s been a long time coming, and the boys have been working their tails off.”
Miller led University to back-to-back titles during his first two years coaching the program in 2018-19.
But before Saturday, that ultimate prize eluded the Bulldogs for six seasons, despite them coming oh-so-close over and over again.
University left no doubt this time around, capping this season with a record of 27-2, closing the campaign on an 18-game win streak, dating to April 7.
D’Evelyn was playing in the first championship game in its program’s history. The Jaguars ended their historic season with a mark of 22-9.
The Bulldogs were the clear aggressors from the opening pitch.
After being the only team unbeaten in the opening rounds of the state tournament a week ago, University had to play fewer games — and use up a lot less pitching — than other teams that made deep runs.
As a result, the Bulldogs had no shortage of capable arms they could turn to in Saturday’s final. They possess likely the deepest staff in 3A, anchored by seniors Joel Ramirez, Gage Viken and Evan Davey-Anderson, as well as junior Derek Casillas — each of whom have an earned-run average less than 1.70 with a cumulative strikeout-to-walk ratio of 206 to 40.
Miller gave Viken the nod, and he certainly didn’t disappoint.
After Viken quickly sat three of the first four batters he faced in the top of the first, the Bulldogs wasted no time going up 1-0 in the bottom half of the inning.
Senior Damian Alvarez drew a walk to lead off the side.
Two at-bats later, Ramirez laced a line drive to the left-center field gap to bring home Alvarez — who had just stolen second base — and put University up 1-0.
“Getting that first run, scoring first, has been one of our big goals throughout the season,” said Alvarez, who hit 2 for 2 with an RBI and two runs. “That was a great feeling. It gave us momentum going into the next inning and the rest of the game. And, we just kept that going.”
The Bulldogs scored three runs in the third and one more in the fourth.
Little did they know, that one run they produced in the opening inning would be more than enough run support for Viken.
Viken engineered an absolute gem on the mound. He allowed just two hits, while striking out 10 and walking two during a 99-pitch complete-game shutout. He had an early stretch in which he struck out seven of 10 batters, including four in a row.
He dominated in similar fashion during a 6-0 second-round win against The Classical Academy a week earlier.
Throughout his four-year high school career with the Bulldogs, Viken has developed a reputation for stepping up in the state tournament at Butch Butler.
But over the past nine days at Butch, he was perhaps sharper than he has ever been.
Uncoincidentally, it also might be the most calm and confident he’s been on the mound.
“I try to hype myself up a little, because the past two years, I’ve been known to not throw hard in the championship — kind of just lay it in there and throw a bunch of offspeed pitches,” Viken said. “But, this year, I tried to hype myself up a lot more, and I just trusted everyone. I felt good to start. But, after the first inning when we started adding on to the score, it felt way easier.”
Flyout, groundout, strikeout — they all would have counted the same as the Bulldogs attempted to retire that final D’Evelyn batter and begin a dogpile of a celebration on the mound.
But, moments after he fanned the Jaguars’ Darian Valdez-Berriel to lock up the championship, Viken admitted he didn’t merely want to end the game, he wanted to end the game with an undeniable exclamation point.
“I want to end every game on a ‘K’,” Viken said. “I don’t mean that in a selfish way, because either way, we get the out and get the win. But I wanted to end it so it was automatic, we could just rush the field. I didn’t want to wait for (my defense) to catch it or make the throw. I just wanted to end it.”
Speaking of ending something in ideal fashion, Viken, Ramirez and the other five seniors on the team made up their minds months ago that after all these years of heartbreak, they weren’t going to settle for playing second fiddle again.
Wearing those blue-and-white Bulldogs uniforms one last time, they were going to end their high school baseball careers as champions.
There was no other option.
“We wanted to go out with the gold this year. … It was a big priority,” Ramirez said. “We knew we should have had it last year, but we kind of fell short. So, we definitely wanted it this year. … It feels amazing, honestly.”
