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STOCKTON, Calif. — BYU baseball’s Bronson Larsen was named the Most Valuable Player of the West Coast Conference tournament this past weekend. The BYU catcher carried his team to its first conference championship since 2002, helping the Cougars earn an automatic bid to the NCAA tourney. The Cougars won four straight games coming out of the elimination bracket to win in the championship over the No. 22-ranked Gonzaga Bulldogs.
In the tournament games, Larsen showed that he was worthy of the MVP title, setting a new WCC tournament record with nine hits. He also set another record of four home runs in the tournament, two of which came in the two final games against Gonzaga on Saturday.
In the first game on Saturday, Larsen went 2-4 with a double and a three-run homer. In the second and championship game, Larsen hit his fourth home run of the tournament to give BYU a 4-1 lead.
Larsen, a senior who prepped at Davis High School, had a season batting average of .344 while hitting 16 home runs. He was also named to the All-WCC First Team and was a team captain this season. In his junior year, he made the WCC All-Tournament team.
The Cougars will play Thursday at 1 p.m. PDT as the No. 3 seed against No. 2 seed Cal-State Fullerton in Stanford, California. Cal-State Fullerton won the Big West Conference. All games can be viewed on ESPN3.com. Lindsey Peterson is a Brigham Young University student studying broadcast journalism. Contact her at lindspeterson4@gmail.com or on Twitter @LindsPetey.
