Arizona baseball: Tyger Talley, Tyler Krause put exclamation point on putrid season for Wildcats

In the final game of the 2014 season, Tyger Talley took a no-hitter into the seventh, as the Arizona Wildcats took the series from Abilene Christian with a 14-1 win.

It wouldn't have been the first no-hitter of the day, as Josh Beckett had thrown one earlier in the day for the Dodgers.

Apparently Cody Moffett told Talley in the middle of the game "hey, did you hear Beckett just threw a no-hitter?" And Talley responded with "Shut up..."

"Everyone was aware," added Tyler Krause. "We knew about Josh Beckett's no-hitter today, so some of the players were talking about that and I was like 'Dude, don't mention no-hitters in the sixth inning. It's fine though."

The no-hit bid came to an end at the beginning of the seventh. Tyler Eager roped one out into the outfield.

Talley still managed to go 8.1 innings on the day, surrendering just four hits, and walked two batters. He came out in the ninth after throwing 131 pitches on the day and whiffing a career-high 13 batters.

"I was fine," Talley said about his arm fatigue in the ninth. "I didn't want to give the ball away. I was trying to shield (the ball) from (Tyler) Parmenter."

"I wanted to leave him out there," added head coach Andy Lopez. "But there were two opportunities. One was to give people a nice round of applause. The other one was it's May 25th, and you've been a Sunday starter for a long time, so if he is going to be a candidate (for next year) we need him healthy."

"We weren't even using him early in the season because of a thing in his shoulder," coach continued. "It's like that old famous line. You don't quite know unless you're there every day. So I understand leave him in, leave him in. But last week he was at 83 MPH in the fifth inning. Why?"

Talley finished around 87-88 MPH in the ninth today.

The other star of the game was Tyler Krause. After just the third inning, the Wildcat left fielder was just a single away from the cycle, and had two more opportunities to get that elusive base hit.

"I was aware of that both plate appearances," Krause joked after the game. "Unfortunately I didn't get it, but that's life."

Krause started the day off for the offense by smoking a home run over the left field fence, just below the scoreboard.

"I actually choked up a little bit because I wanted to get a single," he explained. "But he threw a changeup in, and I just reacted and turned on it and thankfully it went out."

"I was rounding first base and saw it go out and was like 'Wow, alright, maybe the wind helped me a little bit. But it was an awesome feeling."

That home run tied Krause for the team lead in home runs for the season with Trent Gilbert and Bobby Dalbec, who each had two bombs this year.

"I was giving Trent Gilbert a little crap earlier," Krause joked. "I was like 'Hey man, I started halfway through the season and got two home runs, and you got two home runs. How do you feel about that?'"

Arizona finishes the 2014 campaign with an overall record of 22-33. But a win to close it out is always nice.

"That was a big thing for us," Krause said of Sunday's win. "Tyler Parmenter came up to us before we broke it down and said 'Let's play a good game today, play some good baseball and end on a good note."

But it's over, and it's kind of amazing to see how big of a joke this team was from almost the very beginning of the season. Tyger Talley though, putting the cherry on top of what was the worst ice cream sundae ever.