ASU escapes midweek upset, walking off GCU 4-3

There’s a reason they call it midweek madness.

Midweek games in college baseball live in their own world. One night a week where rankings feel meaningless and anything can flip without warning. Depth gets stretched, rotations shuffled, lineups changed, and the game rarely follows the script teams spent the weekend writing. It’s a night built for surprises, a night built for chaos.

This Tuesday delivered exactly that. Four Top 25 teams went down, including No. 2 Texas, another reminder that nothing about the midweek comes easy. Arizona State knows that lesson well. Just a year ago, the Sun Devils finished 6-6 in midweek games, each loss stalling momentum before it could carry into the weekend. And when the opponent is crosstown rival GCU, a team that handed ASU a midweek upset last April, nothing feels routine.

When ASU trailed 3-1 in the seventh, it felt like déjà vu, a midweek slip threatening to erase the progress built over a strong weekend against No. 17 TCU. 

The game looked headed for another frustrating finish until sophomore catcher Coen Niclai changed it with one swing, sending an opposite-field home run to tie the game and bring the energy back to Phoenix Municipal. The bullpen kept ASU alive, including 2.2 perfect innings from graduate right-hander Colby Guy, before the tenth delivered a finish only a midweek can. A bouncing ball to third turned into a scramble and an error, the winning run racing home as the Sun Devils mobbed Niclai in right field. Midweek madness struck again, just not the way ASU feared, as ASU (15-5, 2-1 Big 12) survived GCU (8-14) 4-3.

The game had the look of a grind from the start. Through four innings, it sat scoreless, GCU without a hit and ASU without much pressure at the plate. It felt like someone would have to blink first.

GCU did more than blink.

After sophomore left-hander Easton Barrett, working through command issues that had inflated his ERA, delivered three hitless innings with four strikeouts, ASU turned to junior right-hander Jaden Alba for length. The fifth inning unraveled quickly. Four straight singles followed a strikeout, two runs crossed, and suddenly the Antelopes led 2-0 in a game that had offered little offense to that point.

On the other side, freshman left-hander Cody Kiemele, once an ASU commit before flipping to GCU, kept the Sun Devils quiet. He worked six innings, allowed one run, and walked off the mound each time with visible energy, feeding off a loud group of GCU fans who made the trip across town hoping to see another upset.

“Grand Canyon always plays this tough,” head coach Willie Bloomquist said. “They’re always ready to play us. Talking to Wally over there, he’s like, ‘Hey man, how many games do you want to play this year?’ I want as many as we can. They look forward to playing us and U of A, and they’re tough…Tip my hat to Cody Kiemele, a kid that was committed here, but it didn’t work out, and he went over to Grand Canyon and stuck it to us tonight through six, seven shutout innings, really throwing the ball outstanding.”

ASU finally answered in the sixth, and it came from the bat that has carried the offense all month. Graduate outfielder Dean Toigo, fresh off an eight-hit weekend against TCU and named Big 12 Newcomer of the Week, stepped in still searching for his first hit of the night. He did not stay quiet long.

A hanging pitch stayed up just long enough, and Toigo sent it deep to right for his ninth home run of the season and his sixth in the last seven games, cutting the deficit to one and giving the dugout its first real jolt of energy.

GCU answered in the bottom half with a run on a fielder’s choice, pushing the lead to 3-1 and draining that energy just as quickly. With the Antelopes’ dugout loud and their fans filling the seats behind it, the night started to feel like one that might slip away.

Niclai had other plans.

After a leadoff walk in the seventh, the sophomore jumped on the first pitch he saw and drove it the other way, a no-doubt shot over the right-field wall. He let out a yell rounding first as the game tied at three and the crowd came alive.

It had not been pretty to that point. ASU piled up hits but struggled to cash them in, finishing 4 for 15 with runners on and just 1 for 8 with runners in scoring position. GCU did more with fewer chances, and the game settled into a tight, late-inning fight.

That set the stage for Guy.

The UNC Asheville transfer had only appeared three times all season, all in low-leverage spots. This time, he was asked to keep the game tied, and he did exactly that. 

“These are games that we have to win, but it’s got to be somebody other than Fitzy and Chafe every night,” Bloomquist said. “We’ve got to have other guys step up and be more of a presence back there. The job Colby Guy did was outstanding tonight, and he’ll play a much bigger role moving forward.”

Guy retired every hitter he faced across 2.2 innings, struck out four, and ended the ninth with a 95-mile-per-hour fastball that snapped into the catcher’s glove and sent the game to extras with the momentum finally wearing maroon and gold.

Once the game moved past nine, it felt like it was only a matter of time. ASU entered the night third in the Big 12 in runs scored, the kind of lineup that gets dangerous the longer a game lasts.

In the tenth, Niclai made sure it did not last much longer.

After junior infielder Dominic Smaldino singled to start the inning, Niclai lined a ball to left that should have ended the frame quietly. Instead it kicked past the fielder, Smaldino never stopped running, and the throw home came too late. 

“I just tried to calm myself down as best I could and put together something,” Niclai said. “To be honest, I just blacked out a little bit. Hit the ball, I saw a little snapshot. I saw it bounce over the third baseman. I honestly didn’t think that they would send Dom, but then I saw him trip over himself, and from there, it’s hard to remember anything.”

The Sun Devils poured out of the dugout as Niclai reached the outfield grass, a messy, loud, very midweek finish to a 4-3 win before ASU heads to Manhattan for a weekend series at Kansas State.

Midweek games rarely run smoothly, and perfection is almost impossible. For Bloomquist, that unpredictability is part of their value. 

“You find out the resilience, the toughness. You see it every week. Top 10 teams get knocked off in a midweek game by a team that, man, I’ve never heard of them. Who are they? And they’re winning a big game against a top team in the country. So these midweek games are always challenging, they’re always tough, and they’re always important.”