UCLA baseball bats for the top spot in the Pac-10
No. 7 UCLA will face No. 22 Washington State this weekend at Jackie Robinson Stadium in the Bruins’ final regular season series. The Bruins’ playoff fate will be determined by Monday.
By Ryan Eshoff
May 27, 2010 9:10 p.m.
Come Monday, the UCLA baseball team will be informed of its postseason destinations.
The fate of the Bruins’ regular season, however, is still very much up in the air.
While No. 7 UCLA (41-12, 16-8 Pac-10) will almost assuredly receive a prime spot in the playoffs, there is still the matter of securing a top finish in the conference. The Bruins ““ who are currently second in the conference ““ still have an outside shot at winning the Pac-10 outright, but they can also fall to a third-place tie.
This weekend, UCLA will host a Washington State team that has emerged as a legitimate threat on the West Coast. The No. 22 Cougars (33-18, 14-10) are currently third in the conference but are just two games behind the Bruins, making this final weekend series all the more important.
UCLA, meanwhile, has a shot at grabbing the Pac-10’s top spot if it can sweep Washington State and front-runner Arizona State drops all three of its weekend games.
While conference sweeps generally aren’t very common, UCLA knows a thing or two ““ or three ““ about them. The Bruins recently rattled off their third consecutive Pac-10 sweep when they took all three games from California in Berkeley. Those wins came on the heels of sweeps at Washington and at home against USC. Despite a loss on Tuesday, that kind of conference success has the Bruins feeling plenty confident.
“We’ve got plenty of momentum,” coach John Savage said. “We’re not worried about momentum. We just have to learn from this and make sure we don’t rush through our next game.”
Once the season concludes on Sunday, the postseason intrigue promptly begins.
UCLA is all but guaranteed to host a regional, and should that be the case the remaining three teams participating in that region will be announced on Monday. More up in the air is whether or not the Bruins will land one of the coveted national seeds.
The seeds, which are awarded to eight of the 16 regional hosts, become extremely important in the Super Regional round, in which two teams of that designation are not permitted to meet. Thus, should the Bruins earn one of the eight national seeds ““ a fairly likely scenario given their excellent record and lack of bad losses ““ they will not have to face another nationally-seeded team until the College World Series, presuming they make it that far.
UCLA recently got a taste of what a potential Super Regional could resemble. On Tuesday, the Bruins dropped a 5-2 decision to Cal State Fullerton. It was their second loss of the season at the hands of the Titans, and the two teams could very well meet again in the second round of the postseason given the tendency of the NCAA to determine Super Regional matchups by geography.
After the loss to the Titans, the series with Washington State presents the Bruins with a chance to get back to their winning ways.
“We need to get back to being ourselves ““ and we will,” Savage said. “We have been doing so all year.”
With reports from Blair Angulo, Bruin Sports senior staff.
