The reward for the UCLA baseball team’s 43-win season is a valuable one: They will be saving the athletic department some travel money.
The Bruins, second in the Pac-10 and the No. 6 national seed, will host the Los Angeles Regional this weekend at Jackie Robinson Stadium. Should they advance, they would also host one of next weekend’s Super Regionals.
But first things first.
On Friday, UCLA will face Kent State, the champion of the Mid-American Conference and the region’s fourth seed. That game will follow the duel between second-seeded LSU and third-seeded UC Irvine.
The regional will unfold in a double elimination format. The two winners of Friday’s games will be pitted against each other, as will the two losers. Sunday’s schedule will be further determined by Saturday’s results.
With uncertainty surrounding what matchups will take place throughout the weekend, the setup of the pitching rotation becomes critical. UCLA coach John Savage announced Wednesday afternoon that sophomore right-hander Gerrit Cole will get the nod on Friday night, saying that the decision for that game came down to Cole and senior Garett Claypool.
“We’re just really trying to see what’s the best opportunity for us to win the tournament,” Savage said. “We’re really trying to look at matchups in terms of what team’s a better matchup for us.”
The Bruins’ first opponent is also the one they are most unfamiliar with.
UCLA has faced UC Irvine twice this season and has seen plenty of film on LSU but has only one game tape and some written scouting reports on Kent State.
“We don’t want to look past anybody, that’d be a major mistake,” Savage said. “We’re respecting Kent State very much. They’re a very, very good MAC team.”
UCLA hopes to continue its recent run of weekend success. Following a sweep at the hands of Arizona State on April 30 through May 2, the Bruins rattled off three consecutive weekend sweeps of their own and finished off the regular season by taking two out of three from Washington State.
“You have to keep the same approach that you’ve had,” Cole said. “We try to take it one game at a time, especially going into a weekend series, not focused on the Saturday or Sunday games. I think we did a really good job with that during the season, and I think we’ll carry it over to the postseason.”
In what is widely considered the toughest regional of the 16, the weekend could be determined by the smallest breaks or bounces of the ball. Teams are allotted one hour on Thursday to practice on the field, a time that is probably not significant enough to create familiarity. With that in mind, UCLA is happy to be enjoying the comforts of home.
“It’s our field,” junior pitcher Rob Rasmussen said. “We’re the ones who took care of it in the fall, we’re the ones who practice on it every day. It’s our field, which is going to be an advantage for us.”
For a UCLA team that still speaks of the disappointment of 2009 ““ when the Bruins failed to qualify for the postseason ““ landing one of the eight coveted national seeds means an opportunity to hold serve at home all the way through to Omaha, Neb., the site of the College World Series. And while it is uncharted territory for the Bruins, don’t expect them to shy away from the spotlight, at least according to the guy taking the ball to start things off.
“It is something you strive for to get to one of those top eight seeds,” Cole said. “It’s a very special opportunity. None of us have been in this situation before, but I think we’re chomping at the bit to go out there and play hard.”