OMAHA, Neb. “”mdash; For all their apparent differences, UCLA and TCU aren’t exactly yin and yang. Maybe UCLA, one of the nation’s top public universities, had a stronger pitching staff. Maybe TCU, the only private institution to make it to Omaha, had a stronger offense.
But both teams entered the weekend with a shot to advance, for the first time, to the best-of-three championship finale of the College World Series. And it would be difficult to find a pair of programs more confident than these two after each slew a perennial power and in-state rival in the Super Regionals; TCU went into Austin and knocked off Texas, while UCLA finally solved the puzzle that was Cal State Fullerton.
“This team is obviously very strong mentally,” UCLA senior Blair Dunlap said. “It means a lot to get the opportunity to come to Omaha, to get an opportunity to compete for the national championship, making the last three games of the year.”
UCLA needed to win either Friday or Saturday to advance as the winner of its double-elimination bracket. The Horned Frogs, meanwhile, needed to win on both days after already falling victim once to the Bruins earlier in the week.
UCLA’s 10-3, bracket-clinching victory on Saturday sent the Bruins onward less than 24 hours after TCU forced the rubber match with a 6-2 win of its own Friday.
The Frogs’ freshman left-hander Matt Purke outdueled fellow southpaw Rob Rasmussen, who left in the fifth inning having given up three runs. TCU tacked on three more late in the game to squash any hopes of a Bruin comeback.
Whatever advantage the Bruins had in the bracket format was then promptly extinguished, although they immediately set out to put that fact behind them.
“You’ve got to be able to flush games,” shortstop Niko Gallego said after the loss.
Consider it flushed.
In Saturday’s game, TCU drew first blood with a run in the first inning, but the lead was short-lived. UCLA’s hitters jumped all over the TCU staff to the tune of five first-inning runs, including a three-run home run by Dunlap.
Once sophomore right-hander Trevor Bauer found his rhythm, that was more than enough support for him to lead the Bruins to victory.
“Five spot in the first inning was huge,” Bauer said. “It gives me a lot of confidence that they have my back. Kind of simplifies the pitching approach. It’s huge when the offense can support you like that.”
A day after playing with swagger and confidence, TCU looked out of sync in the sweltering heat with slightly more than 10,000 in attendance.
“They outplayed us in every phase of the game,” TCU coach Jim Schlossnagle said of the Bruins.
Of course, that might have had something to do with Bauer, who gave up a pair of home runs to the Horned Frogs’ Bryan Holaday but not much else. The UCLA right-hander struck out 13 in eight innings of work, improving his season strikeout total to an NCAA-best 165.
He was perhaps at his most impressive in his final frame, when he struck out the side and all but ended any hopes of a TCU comeback ““ the Horned Frogs had, after all, scored seven runs in the eighth to stave off elimination and beat Florida State Wednesday.
UCLA coach John Savage called Bauer’s performance in the eighth “unreal,” and his coaching counterpart was just as impressed.
“I thought we had a chance,” Schlossnagle acknowledged. “But Bauer was just too good.”