UCLA baseball to face California in weekend road trip
Sophomore pitcher Trevor Bauer and the No. 10 Bruins will head to Evans Diamond to face Cal. It will be UCLA’s final regular season series on the road.
By Ryan Eshoff
May 20, 2010 9:28 p.m.
There’s no place like the road.
For the UCLA baseball team, a weekend series away from home may be the ideal situation to extend the team’s four-game winning streak.
The No. 10 Bruins (38-11, 13-8) will head to Berkeley this weekend where they will look to improve on their 16-3 road record and continue their pursuit of the top spot in the Pac-10.
UCLA enters the weekend three games behind conference front-runner Arizona State, with six Pac-10 games to play. The Bruins will contend with a Cal team that is 27-19 overall and 11-10 in the conference and is battling for third. The Bruins wouldn’t mind a repeat of their two most recent Pac-10 series, a sweep of Washington in Seattle and a home sweep of USC.
With the postseason looming, UCLA has to hope that its run of strong play will continue.
“Whether we are (peaking) or not, we’ve got to come out and play the next day,” sophomore starting pitcher Trevor Bauer said. “I think if we do that, we’ll be fine.”
Bauer will once again get the start on Saturday, sandwiched in-between sophomore right-hander Gerrit Cole and junior left-hander Rob Rasmussen. UCLA’s three weekend starters have combined for a 23-7 record and 305 strikeouts. They will face a Cal lineup that ranks third in the conference in batting average and runs scored.
While the Bruins are targeting the Sun Devils at the top of the conference, they will have to be wary of the cluster of teams just behind them. Cal and Washington State ““ UCLA’s final two Pac-10 opponents ““ are two of the three teams just two games behind the Bruins, which means UCLA can control its own fate to a certain extent. The Bruins will continue to rely on the crisp execution that has gotten them this far.
“We’ve been getting drag bunts for hits, scoring runs with two outs, that’s what we’re talking about, the little things,” Bauer said. “I think if we stay with that approach and keep executing like that, things will take care of themselves.”
