Sports Briefly

51s complete sweep against Aces

LAS VEGAS - Brandon Allen put the Aces ahead early with a two-run single in the first, but the Las Vegas 51s took control the rest of the way Thursday night, topping the Reno Aces, 5-3, in the series finale at Cashman Field.

The loss marks Reno's first three-game losing streak of the season and its first series defeat of the season. With the 51s now staked to a 3-1 lead, the two clubs will meet 12 more times in the third chapter of the Silver State Diamond Challenge.

The Aces now head to Salt Lake City for a five-game set against the Bees at Spring Mobile Ballpark. In today's opener, RHP Kyler Newby (0-1, 7.63 ERA) gets the nod for Reno, while Salt Lake will counter with RHP Bear Bay (1-0, 6.41 ERA). First pitch is set for 5:35 p.m. and the action can be heard live on Fox Sports 630 AM in Reno.

Wolf Pack suffer frustrating loss

RENO - Thursday night's Nevada Wolf Pack-Hawaii Rainbows baseball game at Peccole Park came down to one frustrating, irritating, aggravating, baffling, seemingly never-ending series of events that Gary Powers won't soon forget.

"It was unbelievably disappointing," the Wolf Pack coach said after a 12-9 loss to the Rainbows at Peccole Park. "It was a 7-6 game and then those things happen. I couldn't believe what I was watching."

Hawaii, leading just 7-6, sent 11 hitters to the plate in the top of the seventh inning. The Warriors got just three hits, all singles. The Wolf Pack defense, though, committed three errors in the inning and Powers thought there should have been a fourth. Four Wolf Pack pitchers combined to walk two and hit one Warrior hitter.

When the inning finally ended, Hawaii had scored five runs and had taken a 12-6 lead. The Pack nearly got out of the inning without any damage but Pi'ikea Kitamura sent a slow roller toward first that somehow, mysteriously took a left turn around Pack first baseman's Brock Stassi's glove for a single and two runs.

Three errors, a hit and a hit by pitch later and the Rainbows had three more runs before the inning ended.

- Joe Santoro

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