Pitching key to striking out Cardinal

Friday, February 20, 1998

Pitching key to striking out Cardinal

BASEBALL: Bruins’ young talent must confront vast experience of
Stanford

By Kristina Wilcox

Daily Bruin Staff

Both teams played in the College World Series last year. Both
teams lost a few players to the amateur draft and brought in a lot
of freshmen for the 1998 season.

Yet the difference between the UCLA and Stanford baseball squads
is in the pitching.

When the No. 14 Bruins host the No. 1 Cardinal this weekend for
three games at Jackie Robinson Stadium, three veteran pitchers will
start for Stanford (10-0-1), while UCLA (7-4, 2-0 in Six-Pac) will
counter with three underclassmen who had never started a college
game on the mound before the 1998 season.

Regardless, UCLA pitching coach Tim Leary is confident in his
three starters.

"Stanford has more experience in their starting pitching than we
do, but our guys have a lot of talent. We just have to keep going
out there and keep learning from every outing."

UCLA has indeed been learning as it plays. The players are
riding a six-game winning streak into the weekend, after starting
the season on a 1-4 slide.

UCLA’s weekend pitchers – sophomore Rob Henkel (1-2, 7.64 ERA),
true freshman Chad Cislak (2-1, 6.00), and redshirt sophomore Ryan
Reightley (0-0, 6.94) have all chipped away at high ERAs to bring
them down to a respectable level.

But they are countered this weekend by what many call the best
pitching rotation in the nation. All three are juniors and all were
on Pre-Season All-American teams.

Friday’s game will feature the pitching of righthander Jeff
Austin (3-0, 2.00), who was the No. 1 starter in the 1997 U.S.
National Team.

Left-hander Brent Hoard (1-0, 5.52) starts on Saturday. He was
the Pitcher of the Year in the premiere summer league at Cape
Cod.

The series finale features right-handed starter Chad Hutchinson
(2-0, 4.12), who is also the quarterback for the Cardinal football
team.

"We’ve got the work cut out for us," UCLA head coach Gary Adams
said. "You never go into a game thinking you’re going to lose.
We’re going into all of these games believing we’re going to
win.

"But it’s not gonna be easy."

With contributions from Vytas Mazeika, Daily Bruin Staff.