This weekend, UCLA baseball fought for its playoff life in a series against the Oregon State Beavers, but it was the big innings and inability to finish games that did the Bruins in.
In what proved to be UCLA’s toughest challenge of the season, its series loss against second-ranked Oregon State eliminated the 2013 national champion’s chance at defending its title in this year’s NCAA championship tournament.
“We gotta play nine innings in our conference and we played seven innings on Friday, seven innings on Saturday and six again (on Sunday),” said coach John Savage. “But you gotta play a complete game in this league.”
UCLA started the weekend well enough, holding a two-run lead for the first half of the game on Friday, but lost it in the fifth inning and failed to regain traction.
“I thought we started off pretty well and really competed off the mound, but it just came down to finishing,” said redshirt sophomore catcher Justin Hazard.
The Beavers held on to the lead in Friday’s game, scoring one run in the fifth, one in the sixth and two in the eighth, handing the Bruins a 2-4 loss.
“Our problem was not sticking with it all nine innings,” Hazard said. “We know we have to play all nine innings, but we weren’t able to do that this weekend and it really backfired on us.”
This problem with playing through and finishing games is one the team has had to deal with many times this season, but this weekend proved to be the toughest.
On Saturday, the Bruins battled through the fifth inning, cutting the Beavers’ two-run lead two times until Oregon State came back with a big five-run inning in the bottom of the seventh and the Bruins were unable to come back from the deficit. Despite having lost the series at this point, the Bruins were by no means ready to throw in the towel just yet, according to sophomore infielder Trent Chatterton.
“We took two losses and we knew (Sunday) was the last day,” Chatterton said. “We were literally playing with our backs against the wall, so we knew we had to come out swinging and play hard for all nine innings.”
Sunday afternoon gave the Bruins a glimmer of hope, as they got an early lead in the game with redshirt freshman pitcher Nick Kern’s two RBI. However, those were the last two runs the team would put up on the board for the remainder of the weekend.
“We had an opportunity early and jumped on them early again (on Sunday),” Savage said. “But we let the game get away.”
Another huge six-run inning in the bottom of the seventh secured the game for the Beavers, ending the evening with a 11-2 loss for the Bruins.
“We were looking to salvage the series (on Sunday) and go home on a winning note but we fell short,” Hazard said.
Saturday’s and Sunday’s losses added two more to the Bruins’ record as the games were lost by six and nine runs respectively.
In this grueling month of play, the Bruins were unable to catch a break, adding another series sweep to their record, and leaving them with a six-game losing streak.
“You never know until it’s the end until 30 games are played,” Savage said. “So we’re going to stay with the process and stay with our guys until the end.”