As Trent Chatterton stood in the UCLA dugout during the 17th inning Saturday night, he took a look at the clock.
“It was kinda nuts,” the junior second baseman said. “The game started at 6:30. … I looked at the clock – it was midnight.”
Nine minutes later, Chatterton made sure the clock didn’t strike midnight on UCLA’s comeback. Stepping to the plate with the bases loaded, he hit a line drive to deep left field which cleared the bases. His hit, followed by another run, put the Bruins up 11-5 in the top of the 17th.
After Chatterton’s hit put the game out of reach, it was a race against the clock for the No. 2 Bruins (36-12, 18-6 Pac-12). They needed to finish out their 11-5 win against the No. 7 Sun Devils (30-17, 15-9) as quickly as possible in order to maximize their sleep time before the next game – less than 12 hours away.
“Yeah, we got done and pretty much went straight to the hotel,” Chatterton said.
Before the team headed back to the hotel, it made sure not to rest on the series just yet. The Bruins had a 2-0 series lead, but there was still one game to go.
“The postgame talk was just (coach John Savage) saying he was proud of us for outlasting them, proud of us for keeping on, but he also said that we weren’t satisfied with two wins,” said redshirt junior shortstop Kevin Kramer. “We didn’t come (to Arizona State) just to get two wins, we needed to be ready and focused for (Sunday).”
The Bruins got back to the hotel in the wee hours of the morning and Chatterton said they woke up around 8 a.m. to head back to the ballpark.
“You know, obviously, we didn’t get a ton of sleep, but neither did (Arizona State),” Kramer said.
The Bruins didn’t end up achieving their goal of sweeping the series, but their steadfast performance in the 17-inning marathon ensured they at least won it. After UCLA captured the first game of the series 9-0, senior closer David Berg said that game two was the make-or-break one in the series.
“Whenever you go into extra innings … it really becomes a big deal that you win those games,” Berg said. “If we’d lost that one (on Saturday), then Sunday would have meant a whole lot more.”
Berg made sure that UCLA’s extra eight innings of work on Saturday night would not be in vain, as he pitched from the 10th to the 16th inning without conceding a walk-off hit to Arizona State. The performance was reminiscent of UCLA’s extra-innings win against Washington on March 15, when Berg also pitched a career-high six innings to keep the Bruins alive.
“It felt like there was more on the line (against Arizona State),” Berg said. “That Washington one, I was feeling really good, so it was a little bit more of a grind to get through (ASU).”
The whole series was a grind for both Berg and the Bruins. There were 35 innings in less than three days, but Berg said that’s something they are prepared for.
“Hey, you know, that’s part of it,” Berg said. “We knew (we were playing at noon on Sunday) – whether it was a nine-inning game last night or a 17-inning game. So we were prepared for that.”
UCLA will not have much time to rest before it hits the field Tuesday night against Cal State Fullerton.