CORVALLIS - The Corvallis Knights won their sixth consecutive game and clinched a playoff berth on Wednesday night.

They can clinch the West Division championship with a repeat performance tonight.

The Knights used a two-run homer by first baseman Jim Murphy and solid pitching from Oregon State's Blake Keitzman and (possible) Beaver-to-be Jake Peavey for a 5-2 West Coast Collegiate Baseball Conference victory over Kitsap.

Coupled with Kelowna's

8-1 victory over Bend, it guaranteed the Knights no worse than a second-place finish in the West, and eliminated Bend from title contention.

The win also doubled their lead over second-place Kitsap to two games; a victory tonight would give Corvallis a three-game lead over the BlueJackets with three to play, and it owns the tiebreaker should Kitsap pull even as the Knights won the season series.

"It was fun," said Keitzman, who settled down and struck out seven over the final four innings after needing double plays to escape the first and second unscathed. "We had a good crowd, huge support.

"Earlier in the season we had some games where we only had a couple hundred people. It's kind of hard to get yourself up and ready to go for that. Tonight was just really fun."

The series concludes at 7 tonight in the Knights' final regular-season home game. The probable starters are Corvallis lefty Matt Way

(5-0, 2.23) and righty Aaron Bronson (3-2, 2.25).

The second-largest crowd in franchise history (1,206) had barely settled in when Murphy hammered a fastball from Washington State teammate Ross Humes over the left-field fence on a line for his fourth homer of the summer and a 2-0, first-inning lead.

"The first two pitches he came hard in with fastballs, and then he went away with a soft one," said Murphy, a year older than his fellow Cougar. "I thought he might try to come back in and he did. I was waiting for it, and got a good swing on it.

"He's going to hear about that a little bit" when they return to Pullman, he joked. "We had a runner on second and I knew the ball would get over the (left fielder's) head. It just kept going."