There’s a little bit of psychology in every coach’s
repertoire.
UCLA baseball coach John Savage believed that if his club won
two out of three from visiting Stanford over the weekend, they
would be almost a lock to make the NCAA Regionals.
With an 8-7 comeback win on Sunday, the Bruins (30-22, 12-9
Pac-10) won the season series from the Cardinal for the first time
since 1997 and, in doing so, might have clinched a postseason berth
only a year removed from a 15-41 debacle.
After Sunday’s game, Savage was far more reserved.
“We’ve put ourselves in a position to extend the
season,” Savage said. “The season is far from over.
“We haven’t accomplished many of our goals, and we
want to be a team that is playing well going into next week,”
Savage said.
Savage’s low-key approach is nothing new.
With a core of freshman starters, the coach has gone out of his
way to be patient with his players and give them enough room to
fail or succeed based on their own play.
Heading into today’s game against UC Irvine, the last
nonconference game of the year, Savage’s psychology seems to
have worked.
In particular, Savage has made it a point to let his pitchers
work in and out of trouble with the hope that the experience would
pay off at season’s end.
On Sunday, junior Tyson Brummett gave up four earned runs in the
first inning to put the Bruins in the hole. When Stanford padded
its lead to 5-0 in the fourth, Savage left Brummett in the game.
Some coaches would have brought in a reliever as soon as it was
evident the starter was not using his best stuff, but Savage did
not want to overmanage his players.
“We’ve done it all season,” Savage said.
“Tyson Brummett got hit around early. You think, “˜Hey
we need to go to the bullpen.’ But it’s not the right
move.”
“The right move is to keep him in the game, and he kind of
settled down and fought his way through six innings and kept us in
the ball game,” he said. “It’s a credit to his
ability to remain focused and not get rattled.”
Savage has repeatedly said the only way to ensure that the UCLA
baseball program gets legitimately rebuilt is to give it a healthy
dose of tough love.
With a notoriously difficult schedule ““ statistically the
third toughest in the nation ““ Savage wanted to add a layer
or two to the Bruins’ collective skin so they wouldn’t
flounder in the clutch.
“When you have history of (winning), I think it goes to
show that he can take a punch and get back up,” Savage
said.
The results on the field are not the only attributes of the
program that have Savage’s fingerprints on them. The players
he has recruited employ a similar brash penchant for winning.
Freshman infielder Jermaine Curtis was asked earlier in the year
where the Bruins had the biggest room for improvement. Curtis
quipped that his team had no weakness.
Following UCLA’s win on Sunday, Curtis reiterated that he
isn’t at all surprised by his team’s one-year turn
around.
“I always had faith in my team,” he said. “We
have a lot of talent on the team. It shows. Everybody is
productive.”
With reports by Bobby Gordon, Bruin Sports
reporter.