Maybe this is the turning point in the season the Bruins were waiting for.
Buoyed by a series win on the road at then-No. 6 Arizona, the No. 23 UCLA baseball team returned home to begin a season-longest 13-game homestand on Tuesday night.
And the Bruins (13-10, 2-1 Pac-10) made sure to start the homestand on the right foot with arguably their most well-rounded effort of the season, a dominant 6-2 victory over San Diego State (17-11), ending the Aztec’s six-game winning streak and avenging a 6-3 loss last week.
“It was pretty good to actually get a win against San Diego State,” said catcher Brent Dean, who set a career high with three hits in the game. “Having a homestand, coach (John) Savage talked about setting the tone this first game, and I thought that it was a great way to start it.”
Starting on the mound for the Bruins was sophomore Garett Claypool (1-0), who gave the Bruins a stellar outing, pitching five innings, allowing just one hit and no runs while striking out a career-high six batters. He used the fastball well by getting ahead of batters in the count and kept them off balance with the change-up and breaking ball, earning praise from San Diego State coach Tony Gwynn, a member of the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame.
“I thought, overall, Claypool did a nice job of keeping guys off balance, throwing that breaking ball for a strike, mixing in that change-up,” Gwynn said. “He made guys chase that ball up the ladder a little bit; he had us off-stride with his change and did a nice job, and then the bullpen guys came in and closed it out.”
Coming into the game, Claypool had struggled in a bullpen role, amassing an ERA of 7.11 in six appearances. But tonight, Claypool said that the main source of his success on the mound was a renewed confidence and a more competitive attitude, reminding his coach of the Claypool who was so effective last season.
“It was really the Claypool of old,” Savage said. “Maybe he’s a starter. Maybe he doesn’t like coming out of the bullpen or whatever because he looked like the Claypool of ’07, and we have not seen that. With our health and the position we are in right now, we need Claypool to be a big part of this thing.”
Not only was the win important in maintaining the momentum gained from the series win over the weekend at Arizona, but it was crucial in the sense that midweek games factor heavily in a team’s RPI and its chances of making a regional.
“Everybody’s always looking forward to the weekend, but on the West Coast, the Tuesday games, if you overlook them, you’re going to get in trouble,” Savage said. “We can’t overlook Tuesday games because they are as valuable now as all our games. We need Ws. … In terms of RPI and at the end of the day, San Diego State (and) UCLA at 1-1, I think it’s a big deal because we don’t want anybody to have a hammer on us.”
Gwynn is mostly concerned with finding ways to prevail on the road; his team does not play in a major conference and therefore needs quality wins in order to obtain a regional berth.
“You have to find ways to win games like tonight’s game,” Gwynn said. “It’s always hard to go on the road and win. When you’re at home, you sleep in your own bed, you’re in comfortable surroundings, you know all there is to know about your ballpark. When you’re visitors, you come in and try to adjust that day.
“College baseball, this is kind of what happens: The good teams figure out ways to win on the road. Right now we haven’t gotten to that point yet. We’re trying; we’re learning. We’re trying to figure out what things we have to do on a consistent basis to come up here and win a game.”