After a weekend road trip to North Carolina, UCLA baseball was back on familiar ground at Jackie Robinson Stadium on Tuesday night. But the team left its offense on the plane at Los Angeles International Airport.
While the offense only hit .172 over the weekend, the Bruins scored nine runs off of timely hitting.
In a 6-1 loss to Loyola Marymount University (5-7), No. 13 UCLA (7-5) could not muster hits in the key situations like it is accustomed to.
“We’ve got to realize what’s being done to us,” said coach John Savage. “We just never made adjustments. You have to make adjustments in this game and I think they did a better job of (it). … They were the better team tonight.”
Savage said his team played poor baseball, lacked attention to detail and did not execute as it should.
Senior center fielder Brian Carroll led the team with three singles and even got to third base in the first inning, but the team could not capitalize.
The Bruins had another chance to score in the bottom of the third when sophomore shortstop Trent Chatterton led off with a double. He was held up at third on Carroll’s single and would be stranded there as the Bruins failed to score.
“(Chatterton) had a terrible jump,” Savage said. “He didn’t know where the outfielder was. If coach would have sent him, he would have been thrown out by 80 feet, maybe 70 feet.”
LMU took the lead in the fourth inning after freshman starting pitcher Grant Dyer gave up his first two hits of the game. Back-to-back singles had the Lions in business with runners on first and third. The run scored on a groundout, with junior third baseman Chris Keck choosing to get the out at first, instead of trying to get the runner at home.
“Initially, I wanted to go home (but) he got in the throwing lane and so then I decided the best play for me to go to was (first base),” Keck said. “I just wanted to get an out.”
Dyer got knocked out of the game in the fifth inning after hitting the first batter of the inning and giving up two singles to allow another run.
“It wasn’t really (Dyer’s) doing tonight, I think, that unraveled this thing,” Savage said. “We didn’t make a couple plays and we didn’t throw a couple guys out. There’s a lot of things that added up to it.”
LMU put the game out of reach in the seventh and eighth innings, scoring two runs in each inning.
UCLA got on the board in the bottom of the seventh with its first run of the game, but it would not matter. The team had seven hits in the game, but could not string anything together as it only had two multi-hit innings.
“We need to execute a little better with guys on base,” Carroll said. “Some guys are trying to do too much and we just need to play Bruin baseball.”
The Bruins will have a chance to regroup as they play host to Waseda University from Japan in an exhibition game Wednesday at Jackie Robinson Stadium.
“We’re looking forward to it,” Savage said. “They’re competitive. … It gives us a chance to play a lot of different guys and get some different guys on the mound and gear up for the weekend.”