Santa Barbara, Calif. — Just six outs away from a berth in the GSAC Tournament championship game, The Master’s College watched Biola’s JD Meyer hit a two-run homer in the bottom of the eighth as the Eagles rallied to beat the Mustangs 3-2 on the second day of the tournament at Westmont.

The loss moves the Mustangs (35-17) into an elimination game on Wednesday when they’ll face upstart and fifth-seeded Menlo, which knocked top-seeded and host Westmont out of the tournament.

Meyer’s one-out blast, his second of the game, came off Mustang reliever Aaron Alexander (3-1), who had just replaced starter Brad Lohse and it capped the come-from-behind win.

Lohse had pitched masterfully over the first seven innings, allowing a lone run on Meyer’s solo shot to lead off the sixth that halved the Mustang advantage (2-1).  Before that, the righthander had scattered three hits and had made big pitches to keep the Eagles off the scoreboard.  He finished with five strikeouts and a tough no-decision.

His teammates gave him a couple of runs to work with along the way.  In the second inning, the Mustangs capitalized on three Biola miscues to take a 1-0 lead.  With one out, Collin Nyenhuis reached on an error, moved to second base on a wild pitch, and scored from there on another Eagle error.

Three innings later, the Mustangs nicked Biola starter Micah Beyer one more time.  Beyer, who was just as effective (7.1 innings, one earned run allowed on three hits while striking out nine) as Lohse, gave up a leadoff single in the fifth to Jonah Jarrard.  Danny Lutz ran for Jarrard and advanced to second base on Pearson Good’s sacrifice bunt.  After Aaron Shackelford struck out, Max Maitland stepped up and drove in Lutz with a two-out single to right field.

That two-run lead held up until JD Meyer took over.

Looking ahead to Wednesday, the Mustangs will face a Menlo squad that beat them two out of three in early April.  The winner moves on to another date with Biola later in the afternoon. The Eagles are in the catbird seat, needing only to win once to claim the tourney crown while the TMC-Menlo winner will need to beat Biola twice to achieve the same goal.