In a season that has been considered one of the worst in the
program’s history, the UCLA baseball team still fared just as
well as past Bruin squads this past weekend at Stanford. No UCLA
team has won a series in Palo Alto since 1993, but the Bruins
(13-35, 2-16 Pac-10) were one inning away from accomplishing that
feat this past weekend. The Bruins picked up their second Pac-10
victory of the season against No. 21 Stanford (29-19, 10-8) on
Saturday and had an excellent opportunity to pick up a victory
Friday as well. “It could have been a really good
weekend,” UCLA coach John Savage said. “We pitched
about as well as we can against a pretty good offensive team on
Friday and Saturday, and I felt that we should have won both
games.” Friday, Hector Ambriz turned in a dazzling
performance through eight innings, allowing just a pair of hits and
no runs. He entered the ninth with a 2-0 lead, having retired 14
Cardinal batters in a row. However, he ran into some trouble and
gave up the game-winning double just one out from victory.
Saturday, the Bruins held onto their lead and won 4-3. After many
strong performances in which he did not receive run support, Bryan
Beck picked up his first win of the year by tossing 8-1/3 innings
and allowing three runs, two earned. “If you could have asked
me at the end of the year if I could have had one win this year, I
would have picked for it to be against Stanford,” Beck said.
Beck again did not receive ample offensive support, but it was
still sufficient. Shortstop Tommy Lansdon collected three hits and
knocked in Chris Denove with a second inning single for the first
run of the game. And right fielder Chris Jensen’s two-out,
two-run single in the seventh proved to be the game winner.
“It was a good situation for our team,” Jensen said.
“And I just hit the ball hard.” Brian Schroeder closed
the door for his first save by entering with one out and the
winning run on second in the ninth, striking out the first hitter
and then inducing a game-ending pop-fly out. Sunday, UCLA fell
behind early and wasn’t able to keep it close in losing
11-1.
ROWING: UCLA finished fourth at the Pac-10 Championships
yesterday in Sacramento. The Bruins, who finished with 49 points,
were 19 points behind first-place Cal. Defending their title from a
year ago, the Golden Bears won both varsity eight races to propel
them to the victory. Washington finished second and USC, buoyed by
a win in the varsity four, took third. The Bruins’ best
finish was second place in the second varsity eight, in which they
were 2.6 seconds behind the Golden Bears. UCLA’s first
varsity eight placed fifth, while its varsity four placed
fourth.
Compiled by Ben Peters and Andrew Finley, Bruin Sports
senior staff