Wins revive season hopes

A season that began with great expectations for the UCLA baseball team has turned into a season of underachievement and frustration.

A season that began with a No. 1 preseason ranking and serious hopes of going to the College World Series in Omaha, Neb., has spiraled into a No. 23 ranking and talks of the need to come together as a team.

A 5-1 start has been overshadowed by a 5-8 skid, brought about by inconsistent hitting, poor starting pitching and a rash of injuries.

That’s when the players decided that if they want to achieve the goals they set at the beginning of the season ““ win the Pac-10, make it to Omaha and win the program’s first national championship ““ they needed to do something different.

Tired of the losing and the failure to play up to their standards, the players called a meeting to discuss where the team was and to allow players to voice their opinions.

“It was kind of a team bonding meeting,” shortstop Brandon Crawford said. “We wanted to get where everyone was on their feelings toward the team. We wanted to get everything out in the open, and we realized that we have a fresh start to the season with the start of Pac-10 play.”

Apparently the Bruins took what was said in the meeting to heart, as they took two of three games at highly touted Arizona in their opening weekend of Pac-10 play, a feat that coach John Savage takes great confidence from.

“Obviously we haven’t played up to our abilities so far this season,” Savage said. “But we have to take some positives and look on the bright side that we went into one of the toughest places to play in the nation and won two out of three.”

The early season struggles are similar to the struggles the team experienced early last season. In 2007 the Bruins stumbled out of the gate, falling to a record of 8-14, before a 14-run eighth inning in a win against Pacific and a road sweep of Stanford sparked the team through the Pac-10 season and into a berth in a Regional and an appearance in the Super Regionals.

While the team was able to turn its season completely around last year, third baseman Jermaine Curtis is not a huge fan of that sudden type of transformation.

“I’m not too big on turning on the switch,” Curtis said. “But we have the potential, the talent, the commitment, we all have that mentality that we can win. We’re confident that we can do well in the Pac-10, and we need to go out there and play.”

Crawford said he believes the Bruins were able to bounce back from tough losses to Cal State Fullerton, Long Beach State and San Diego State to win two of three against Arizona because they had the same mentality the team had last season when it ended its slump.

“(Last year) was a similar mentality to where we were heading into the Arizona series,” Crawford said. “We just needed to go out and play and have fun playing the game. Have fun playing like when we were kids and not putting the added pressure on us.”

Pressure is one of the main reasons Savage believes the team has struggled offensively this season.

“I think that a lot of the guys have put pressure on themselves and have tried to do too much,” Savage said. “So far this season, our hitters have put pressure on themselves and tried to hit for power numbers instead of looking for quality at bats.”

Coming into the season, the Bruins were tabbed No. 1 in Baseball America’s preseason poll for the first time in the program’s history. As the season has progressed, the Bruins have slipped to No. 23, failing to maintain the high expectations heading into the season. The inability to maintain a consistent level of play raises the question of whether the pressure of living up to high expectations has affected the Bruins’ performance.

“I guess that it has had some effect,” Savage said. “To be honest, it didn’t feel like it, but the way that we played, it looked like it did. We just didn’t play good baseball. When you don’t pitch and you don’t hit well, it’s tough to play nine innings and come out on top.”

Curtis does not believe the high preseason expectations have been the cause of the team’s struggles. Rather, he blames an insufficiently competitive attitude.

“Everyone has high expectations,” Curtis said. “Everyone on the team has high expectations. So it doesn’t bother us. We were just not competing enough. Now we realized that everyone wants to come out and attack us. So we need to come out and play.”

As the Bruins open up a 13-game home stand tonight against San Diego State, the team is simply looking to maintain the momentum gained from the Arizona series and to start a run similar to the one that sparked last season’s Super Regional run.

“College baseball is a game of energy and momentum, and we have to ride what we gained over the weekend into the (next) weekend,” Savage said. “We talked about the need to put the stake down, to put the flag down and have ownership of Jackie Robinson Stadium. We want to play well at home and make it a difficult place for teams to come and play at.”

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