Baseball opens NCAA regional with commanding win over Omaha

Junior right-hander Ryan Garcia showed why he was the Pac-12 Pitcher of the Year.

No. 1 seed UCLA baseball (48-8, 24-5 Pac-12) defeated No. 4 seed Omaha (31-23-1, 20-10 Summit) 5-2 to win its first game of the Los Angeles regional and advance to the winners’ bracket. The Bruins were led by 8 1/3 innings from Garcia four days after he was recognized as the top pitcher in the conference.

Garcia began his outing by getting through Omaha’s lineup without allowing a baserunner and striking out three. Third baseman Breyden Eckhout broke up Garcia’s perfect game with a solo home run to lead off the fourth.

“I made a mistake, he took advantage of it,” Garcia said. “But then it’s just, no one’s going to feel sorry for you. You still have to compete for your team. There’s 26 other guys counting on you to get the next guy.”

Junior left fielder Jack Stronach said he was confident in Garcia’s ability to bounce back after allowing the run.

“When Breyden Eckhout hit that home run, I’m out there in left field like ‘Hey, I know (Garcia)’s going to keep competing,’” Stronach said. “Everybody makes mistakes, but the way (Garcia) goes back and competes after bad stuff happens is really impressive.”

Garcia retired the next six Mavericks following the home run, but he pitched into jams in both the sixth and seventh innings. Garcia escaped the sixth with an inning-ending double play and the seventh with a fly-out that stranded two.

Coach John Savage pulled Garcia after he allowed an unearned run in the ninth, calling for junior right-hander Kyle Mora to get the final two outs of the game.

Garcia’s counterpart, Omaha right-hander Payton Kinney, came into Friday’s matchup with an 11-1 record and Summit League-best 1.65 ERA. Of the first 14 Bruins he faced, only freshman catcher Noah Cardenas – who hit a single in the third – reached base.

“(Kinney)’s a senior that knows what he’s doing,” Savage said. “So, having said that, I’ve got to give them a lot of credit for coming in and really battling.”

The Bruins’ offense showed life in the fifth by loading the bases with singles by Stronach, junior right fielder Jeremy Ydens and Cardenas. Freshman third baseman Matt McLain hit a deep sac fly to left to bring home Stronach and tie the game at one apiece.

Sophomore center fielder Garrett Mitchell followed by knocking a two-RBI single to right to give UCLA a 3-1 lead.

“(Kinney) had a couple of mistakes and we capitalized on those, I think that was the biggest thing,” Mitchell said. “He pitched us well, he was consistent, and we were just able to capitalize on the pitches where he didn’t.”

The Bruins added two insurance runs in the sixth off back-to-back RBI doubles by senior designated hitter Jake Pries and Stronach.

UCLA will face Loyola Marymount for the third time this season at 7 p.m. on Saturday with the chance to play in the championship series Sunday.

“Those Tuesday games where we beat them don’t mean anything at this stage,” Savage said. “You saw it tonight; it’s postseason. You better be prepared to play.”

Softball one step closer to title after taking down Pac-12 rival Arizona

The Bruins flipped the script on their Pac-12 rivals.

No. 2 seed UCLA softball (53-6, 20-4 Pac-12) came out on top 6-2 over conference rival No. 6 seed Arizona (48-13, 19-5) on Friday in a Women’s College World Series matchup between two teams that have a lot of history.

“Every time there’s a UCLA-Arizona game, it is a great battle; usually a very offensive battle,” said coach Kelly Inouye-Perez. “We throw a lot of punches back and forth. You literally have to watch the game down to the last pitch.”

UCLA defeated Arizona in the WCWS finals back in 2010 to give the Bruins their 11th championship, which was the last time the two teams had played each other in Oklahoma City.

More recently, UCLA lost its only series of the regular season against Arizona just three weeks ago, dropping two of the three games and giving up all 12 runs by way of the home run.

And though Arizona hit two more home runs in Friday’s game, it was a home run from UCLA that gave the Bruins the lead, and ultimately the victory.

UCLA had struck first in the third inning, with junior center fielder Bubba Nickles starting it off with a single. After advancing to second on a walk, Nickles moved over to third when the Arizona shortstop made a fielding error, and she scored on a sacrifice fly by redshirt junior pitcher Rachel Garcia.

But Arizona evened the score at 1-1 in the bottom of the inning with a solo home run from Alyssa Palomino – the 109th of the season for the Wildcats and one more than the No. 1-seeded Oklahoma Sooners.

But with the game on the line, UCLA put in sophomore infielder Malia Quarles as a pinch hitter in the sixth inning – and she delivered. Quarles drove a solo home run to center field to give the Bruins the lead late in the game.

“I didn’t swing at the two previous pitches, so I was like ‘Well, I’m not striking out, so I’m going to hit this,'” Quarles said. “I saw the pitch right there and I was like ‘I’m swinging as hard as I can,’ and I swung, and it felt pretty good.”

The Bruins built on their lead in the top of the seventh inning, scoring four runs to secure the victory.

“We were getting on it all game, we just didn’t have our moment,” Garcia said. “We were squaring up balls, they were just going right to people. So we started making a little bit more of an adjustment and hitting it more to the gaps, and just coming up huge in moments that it was needed.”

Garcia started in the circle for the second day in a row after throwing 116 pitches in UCLA’s win over No. 7 seed Minnesota on Thursday.

The back-to-back USA Softball Player of the Year gave up four home runs in the 8 2/3 innings she pitched against the Wildcats in the regular season series, but fared much better Friday, holding Arizona to two runs on four hits over seven innings while striking out six.

UCLA will next play Sunday in the WCWS semifinals against the team that advances out of the elimination bracket in tomorrow’s elimination games. This was the point at which last year’s Bruins were eliminated, when they came into the semifinals through the winner’s bracket but fell to eventual champions Florida State two games in a row.

“We come in and do what we do,” Garcia said. “That’s what’s most important right now, we just have to be in that moment.”

 

Box Office: The history behind how studios choose when in the year to release movies

Hollywood’s a company town. It might be a cliche, but in this age of record-breaking box office hauls, it couldn’t ring truer. With every film around the corner a potential franchise, the box office has become a high-stakes chess game for studios; who gets a sequel, and who gets left in the dust? In his “Box Office” series, Daily Bruin contributor Ryan Wu will explore the ins and outs of recently released films that topped and flopped at the box offices.

At the time, “Venom” appeared to be another misstep for Sony’s ailing Columbia Pictures. The much-joked about movie – centered around a Spider-Man villain without Spider-Man – unveiled its first trailer with all the grace of a certain biological expulsion in a light zephyr.

All but confirming everyone’s worst fears was the release date: early October, a time typically reserved for Oscar-bait dramas and cheap horror flicks, not a midbudget superhero tentpole film.

But “Venom” proved the naysayers wrong. Originally tracking for a $55 million debut at the box office, the movie exploded with an $80 million opening weekend, the highest recorded in October. In fact, “Venom” fits with a relatively recent pattern of big blockbusters opening in times outside of summer and winter vacation, with movies like “Black Panther,” “Suicide Squad” and “Deadpool” showing the potential of “dead months” like August and February.

But why were they considered dump months in the first place? What made these traditions into traditions? The answer lies in the box office and in its history.

Until the ’70s, the dominant release strategy was to premiere a film in big cities like New York or Los Angeles in order to build up critical acclaim and word of mouth before disseminating prints to smaller cities when the buzz started trickling out to the rest of the country. A movie like “Frankenstein” might premiere in New York before showing in hundreds of other cities across the nation as more and more people talked about it.

All this changed with the 1975 release of Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws,” a monster hit that’s widely considered the first “blockbuster” created. Based on the Peter Benchley novel of the same name, “Jaws” premiered in a then-massive 409 screens across the U.S. and became a huge hit. An innovative marketing campaign emphasizing the novel and film as complementary experiences helped propel “Jaws” to record-breaking highs and established summer as the prime season for film releases.

Social and economic factors also played a part. By the ’80s, when movies like “Jaws” and “Star Wars” were becoming popular, the bigger-is-better attitude of the Reagan era had begun to affect America’s movie theaters. Huge, auditoriumlike “multiplexes” began sprouting across the country, allowing more showings per day and more people per showing and facilitating the big openings that “Jaws” helped create.

It was off to the races, and studios had dollar signs in their eyes. A new kind of scheduling strategy was born, one that emphasized big opening weekends over slow-burn steady releases. By the 2000s, producers like Alan Horn had begun emphasizing four or five heavily advertised “tentpole” films, generally released around summer or Christmas to capitalize on vacation weeks, which produced most of the yearly revenue for the studio. They tended to be franchise films – think “Harry Potter” and the Marvel Cinematic Universe – and they usually got plum positions on the calendar to help magnify their inherent popularity.

Nonblockbuster releases, meanwhile, often colonized the year’s “dump months” – back-to-school months like August or January, or awkward, vacationless months like October. Without big budget spectacles to compete against, smaller releases have traditionally thrived in these box office dead zones.

However, just as many studios have begun releasing blockbusters year-round, so too have smaller releases found success in the more traditionally busy summer months.

Assistant manager of digital marketing at Paramount Pictures Garima Verma said that the internet has helped smaller releases connect with their core audiences more quickly and efficiently than ever before.

“You look at marketing data, and they’re shifting more and more into digital, just because there’s a lot more you can do with it. You’re able to more specifically target the types of people that are going to go to your movie,” Verma said.

What this means is that smaller films – ranging from creature features like “A Quiet Place” to musical biopics like “Rocketman” – are still able to connect with audiences and make money in the shadow of the big tentpoles.

Whatever a studio’s strategy might be, there’s no signs that Hollywood is slowing down. After a quiet start to the year, “Avengers: Endgame” blew the gates open, creating record revenues for Disney and ushering in a slate of summer blockbusters such as “Spider-Man: Far from Home,” “The Lion King” and “Godzilla: King of the Monsters.”

“Godzilla: King of the Monsters” had its own long, winding journey from the soundstage to the theater. Originally slated for June 8, 2018, Warner Brothers pushed it to March 22 of the current year, before settling on a May 31 release date – three weeks after “Detective Pikachu” and a week before “Secret Life of Pets 2.”

Sometimes, there isn’t a perfect moment. You’ve just got to bite the bullet and hope the audience comes.

 

Week nine: Former football players sue UCLA, softball enters college world series

This Week in the News serves as The Quad’s space for reflection on current events at and around UCLA. Every week, Daily Bruin staffers will analyze some of the most significant stories to keep readers up to speed.

UCPD search for missing student last spotted 2 weeks ago

Marc Kalis, a fourth-year statistics student, has gone missing.

Kalis was last seen moving out of Sproul Hall about two weeks ago, where he previously worked as a resident assistant.

Kalis was born in Cape Town, South Africa, but grew up in Bahrain. His parents have come to Los Angeles to aid in the search and will remain in the country until he is found.

UCPD has said there have been no new developments in the case since Kalis was reported missing.

Anyone with information about the case can contact UCPD at 310-825-1491 or Kalis’ parents at 424-391-4387.

Three former football players allege neglect and severe injury, sue Jim Mora, UCLA

Former UCLA football players John Lopez, Poasi Moala and Zachary Bateman filed lawsuits against UCLA, former head coach Jim Mora and the NCAA on Thursday.

The lawsuits allege that while playing at UCLA, Mora and his coaching staff repeatedly neglected the players’ injuries and rushed them back to the field too early.

Lopez, who filed a $15 million lawsuit, alleges that he suffered three traumatic brain injuries during his time playing for the Bruins that played a significant role in eventually causing his 2016 suicide attempt, according to Thakur Law Firm, APC.

Moala, according to the firm, also alleges that concussions as well as hip injuries he sustained while playing for UCLA led to symptoms of traumatic brain injury. Similarly, Bateman is suing Mora and the school for severe foot injuries sustained while playing for the Bruins that were allegedly worsened due to neglect, the firm said.

A UCLA statement released Thursday said the health and safety of student-athletes is the university’s top priority and that only team physicians are responsible for clearing injured players to play.

Softball advances to college world series after sweep of James Madison

No. 2 seed UCLA softball defeated James Madison by a score of 7-2 on Saturday to advance to the Women’s College World Series in Oklahoma City as one of the final eight teams left in the postseason.

On Thursday, the Bruins defeated No. 7 seed Minnesota by the same score of 7-2 in the opening round of the world series.

Junior outfielder Bubba Nickles hit a lead-off home run for UCLA, and redshirt junior pitcher Rachel Garcia pitched a complete game, giving up just two runs on four hits while striking out seven.

UCLA advanced to the winners bracket where it will face No. 6 seed Arizona on Friday afternoon.

UCLA community offers views on possibilities, shortcomings of SAT ‘adversity score’

The College Board recently announced a new Environmental Context Dashboard –referred to as an “adversity score” by many media outlets. The score aims to provide context to student’s socio-economic and education backgrounds to supplement their SAT scores.

The Daily Bruin asked several UCLA professors and students whether they thought the new score would be effective in increasing disadvantaged students’ access to higher education.

Tyrone Howard, an education professor at UCLA, was concerned the ECD does not factor in race to a student’s education and background.

Similarly, Naomi Riley, a second-year political science student and the Academic Affairs commissioner for the Undergraduate Students Association Council, said she doesn’t think the ECD will help disadvantaged peoples in the ways the College Board thinks it will.

“I think the push towards the adversity score is kind of like standardizing and categorizing struggle, which I think is problematic in itself,” Riley said in the article published Tuesday. “And I think it really generalizes people’s personal history and struggle and things of that nature.”

Ozan Jaquette, an assistant professor in higher education at UCLA who was consulted on the creation of the ECD, said he thinks the implementation of the ECD is a step in the right direction but that it may become more effective once it undergoes further adjustments.

33rd JazzReggae Fest brings community together to celebrate music under the sun

Attendees at the JazzReggae Festival held Monday at Sunset Recreation Center saw seven different musical talents perform.

In the 33rd iteration of the event, performers ranged from The Roswell Universe, who described its music as “International Space Music,” to Etana, a Jamaican reggae singer who recently received a Grammy nomination for her album “Reggae Forever.”

Two jazz groups from the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music also performed. The larger UCLA Contemporary Jazz Ensemble performed a variety of traditional-sounding jazz numbers, while the ensemble from the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz Performance at UCLA was smaller and featured more freestyle solos.

Attendees soaked up the music and the sun while mostly laying out on blankets.

Nosalina Joane Omorogieva, co-director of the JazzReggae Fest, came on stage before McGregor to thank the performers, security, staff and volunteers for helping to put on the event, and the audience for coming out on a hot and sunny day.

Students voice concerns about bathroom policy, security camera monitoring

Students at a town hall Tuesday voiced their concerns over two recently drafted policies.

UCLA Policy 890, Gender Inclusive Facilities, will require all new campus buildings to have at least one multistall gender-inclusive bathroom within the building or at least two bathrooms within a two-minute walk.


Student feedback regarding Policy 890 focused on the requisite height partitions between stalls, which were stipulated to be higher than the typical partitions found in male or female restrooms. Some students saw the taller partitions as transphobic while others pointed out how they could drive up renovation costs enough to inhibit the quick construction of multistall gender inclusive restrooms.

Policy 133, Security Camera Systems, aims to create a centralized database of recorded images and establish guidelines for the removal of cameras that are not compliant with the new policy. Student concerns regarding Policy 133 centered on the possibility for racial profiling in live camera monitoring.

Administrative Vice Chancellor Michael Beck said that there are currently 2,500 cameras on campus not regulated by a single policy and that Policy 133 aims to unify regulations on campus security cameras and remove those that do not apply.

After the review periods for both policies ends June 20, administrators will have the chance to propose more revisions based on student input.

Throwback Thursday: Triple residence hall rooms introduced in 1988, overcrowding poses problems today

This post was updated May 31 at 5:14 p.m.

Throwback Thursdays are our chance to reflect on past events on or near campus and relate them to the present day. Each week, we showcase and analyze an old article from the Daily Bruin archives in an effort to chronicle the campus’ history.

If you’ve lived in a residence hall, you know the trappings: precariously scaling bunk beds, bumping into your roommates and hopelessly cramming all your friends into a shoebox.

However, UCLA hasn’t always been stuffing three students into one tiny dorm room. Up until 1988, UCLA only housed two students in each dorm.

In fact, the idea of raising that number was considered so radical that then-Daily Bruin staffer Kyle Rudderow wrote “It sounds like a nightmare come true: three people living in one dorm room.”

In 1988, UCLA’s pilot program was instituted as a way to solve the displacement of students amid necessary seismic correction construction. The complexity and time it would require to install new “sheer walls” of steel and cement in certain residence halls left more than 400 students in need of a place to live.

The obvious solution for on-campus housing: Buy bunk beds. Seventy rooms in each residence hall were reconfigured to accommodate for three students instead of two. These dorms featured practical “stacking furniture,” intended to maximize both storage and floor space.

The construction proposals focused on the safety of students. However, despite the imperative reasoning for the improvements, UCLA expressed hesitation for commencing work on both campus housing and the triple pilot program. At the time the Daily Bruin article was published, the $13.8 million project had not been formally approved, but they foresaw no legitimate reasons for the regents and Internal Campus Reviews to reject the proposal.

Existing residents were incentivized to volunteer for the pilot housing program with guaranteed housing for the 1988-1989 school year and a $200 reduction on their housing bill. Naturally, hundreds of students jumped at the chance to reap the benefits and from a large applicant pool, 120 were selected to participate.

Mark Greenstone, a former student and then-freshman who had been living in Hedrick Hall, took part in the pilot program. He said he liked it more than what he had before but also said getting along is key.

Unfortunately, UCLA continues to face a housing crisis. Students, however, no longer need to be incentivized to live in triples because it has become the new standard.

In 2017, UCLA announced a plan to build a 20-story high rise in Westwood and for residence halls replacing Lot 15 on the Hill. These projects plan to accommodate a greater number of students and increase housing guarantees from three to four years.

However, the construction proposed for Westwood has perturbed the local residents. Los Angeles locals worry the new residence hall will harm the aesthetics of the area. Regardless, construction has begun and the new residence hall will be in use soon.

Carole Magnuson, vice president of the Westwood Hills Property Owners Association, said in 2017 she believed the new Westwood property will not mesh with the local surroundings.

However, some students disagreed. Chloe Pan, former external vice president of Undergraduate Students Association Council shared how this critique comes from a point of privilege.

“It is a privilege to be more concerned about the aesthetics of Westwood than it is to be concerned about the functionality of the buildings,” said Chloe Pan, “A lot of students do not have the luxury of worrying about whether they have good views of Westwood.”

As the UC with the highest undergraduate enrollment and the smallest campus, crowding seems inevitable. Student and community voices continue to clash as UCLA carves its spot in Westwood and students fight for a place to live. Whether the rooms they live in will be doubles, triples or quadruples, only time will tell.

County officials issue precautions after individual diagnosed with whooping cough

This post was updated 2:04 p.m. on May 31.

An individual at UCLA was diagnosed with whooping cough, prompting county health officials to advise several people on campus to get vaccinations.

The individual, who had spent time in Murphy Hall, was diagnosed with whooping cough within the last two weeks, according to an email sent to faculty from Jami Carman, the senior associate dean of the Anderson School of Management.

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health advised several people who may have been exposed to the disease in Murphy Hall to get vaccinated after the case of whooping cough was confirmed, according to the email.

Carman said in the email she believes the risk of infection is low because no new cases of whooping cough were reported within 10 days of the initial diagnosis, the typical amount of time it takes for symptoms to develop.

The early symptoms for whooping cough usually include a mild fever, a runny nose and a persistent cough. If the disease progresses, patients may experience vomiting and exhaustion. All incoming UCLA students are required to self-report having received the whooping cough vaccine before registering for classes.

Carman said in the email that she sent out the notice after several people expressed concern about the case. This email comes about a month after the campus was identified as a potential site for exposure to measles.

UCLA did not respond in time to a request for comment.