Baseball maintains title hope as it prepares for Fullerton

The UCLA baseball team’s chances of defending its 2013 College World Series title are dwindling, but as senior catcher Shane Zeile said, never say never.

In its penultimate midweek game, UCLA is set to face Cal State Fullerton as it attempts to compensate for last month’s 4-3 loss against the Titans in hopes of increasing their chances at a postseason.

The last time the two teams met up, the Bruins got an early lead, but surrendered it halfway through the game by allowing the Titans to score three runs off of freshman pitcher Grant Dyer in a single inning.

This time around, redshirt sophomore outfielder Christoph Bono is hoping the team gets riled up enough to bring a great deal of aggression into the game to secure the win.

“We had a close game with them last time, so hopefully everybody will be fired up to be playing them again,” Bono said. “I know that if we play our game, we’ll put ourselves in a good situation to win. We just need to get back to doing that.”

The consensus amongst the Bruins has been that they must forgo their recent attempts at changing up their approach by getting “too big” and go back to playing the way they know how, said junior catcher Shane Zeile.

“We’re going to try to go back to our original approach of just trying to get the next guy up, instead of doing too much and trying to hit that three-run home run or any of that,” Zeile said.

Coach John Savage has also tried to get the team into the mindset of playing an offensive game, rather than defense-focused, noting that the most recent wins from teams across the board have come from strong aggressive plays. No. 1 Oregon State and No. 2 Virginia have averaged a .378 and .381 slugging percentage, respectively, while UCLA has averaged about .326 and about three runs in the past month.

“It’s the way college baseball is right now,” Savage said. “The teams that are offensing and knowing how to put up a run or two every other inning end up winning.”

As the team is beginning to feel the pressure of the season winding down, Savage has been stressing the importance of not giving up, at least not yet.

For now, the Bruins will have to forget the pressures of the postseason, forget the pressures that come from losing five of the last six home games, and focus on the present challenge: Tuesday night’s game against Cal State Fullerton.

“We kind of have to go one game at a time at this point,” Zeile said. “If we just keep our heads down and live in the present I think we’ll be fine.”