After losing all three games over the weekend, coach John Savage said it was time to go back to the drawing board and that the team needed to play better.
UCLA baseball had been ranked No. 6 in the nation, but was swept by then-No.1 Vanderbilt, then-No. 7 TCU and then-No. 25 USC, prompting Savage to say that his team clearly wasn’t as good as they thought they were.
Now ranked No. 11 in the nation, UCLA (12-4) bounced back on Tuesday afternoon to defeat Pepperdine (8-9), 5-3, at Eddy D. Field Stadium. With the victory, the Bruins matched the five runs they scored this past weekend and remained undefeated through their first four midweek games of the season.
“We know we have a good team and we needed to bounce back,” Savage said. “Anything can happen over a weekend and we didn’t play the way we wanted, clearly. We needed to bounce back and respond and that’s what we did today, we responded.”
The Bruins’ lineup was boosted by the return of sophomore outfielder Brett Stephens, who has been out since Feb. 20 due to a fractured finger that he suffered against the University of North Carolina. He started at designated hitter on Tuesday, but has worked out in the field and is medically cleared to play defense.
His return to the leadoff spot allowed everybody else to shift back down to their normal spot in the order.
Maybe not coincidentally, UCLA got off to the hot start that it sorely needed, scoring four runs in the opening frame. Three of those runs came off the bat of senior first/third baseman Chris Keck, as he launched his team-leading sixth homer to right center.
“We jumped on them,” Savage said. “We came out and swung the bats really aggressively in the first inning. That set the tone.”
From there, the bats were mostly silent, until freshman second baseman Sean Bouchard connected in the sixth inning for his second home run of the season to give UCLA a 5-0 lead. The Bruins now have 16 homers for the year, doubling up last year’s total.
But the standout of the day was freshman pitcher Griffin Canning, who continued to impress in another midweek start. After giving up two runs in 2.1 innings of relief at Dodger Stadium on Sunday, he pitched six scoreless innings, striking out a career-high nine batters, while only allowing two hits.
Canning said he wasn’t affected by the quick turnaround of throwing 41 pitches on Sunday to throwing 92 pitches today, because he normally throws 45-pitch bullpen sessions on Sundays.
Meanwhile, Savage had high praise for his blossoming freshman.
“He’s just been outstanding in his starts,” Savage said. “He’s as good as there is out there I think as a freshman in the country and he’s proven that every Tuesday he’s gone out.”
The Waves didn’t go down easy, however. Pepperdine scored three runs in the final two innings off of UCLA’s usually sturdy sophomore pitcher Grant Dyer and senior closer David Berg.
But with the winning run at the plate, Berg was able to get a strikeout to seal the victory and his second save of the season.
“This (past) weekend was obviously pretty rough … (but we) got a wake up call on what we needed to accomplish as a team,” Bouchard said. “We just got back to the basics a little bit and just played Bruin baseball today.”
UCLA will have to continue to do so, as it begins Pac-12 conference play this weekend when the team hosts Washington for three games at Jackie Robinson Stadium, starting Friday at 6 p.m.