Around the League: May 24

Baseball
Jared Tay, Daily Bruin contributor

The regular season is coming to a close for the Pac-12.

No. 4 Stanford baseball (39-11, 20-7 Pac-12) and No. 12 Oregon State (35-17-1, 20-7) sit 2.5 games behind first place, with two games left to play for each. No. 1 UCLA (46-8, 23-5) is on top of the Pac-12 standings – its win against Oregon on Thursday clinched the Pac-12 title for the Bruins.

Stanford traveled to Arizona State for its last regular season series. Stanford holds a 98-103 all-time record against ASU and completed a 3-0 sweep over the Sun Devils last year. ASU boasts a 0.527 slugging percentage and 88 home runs on the season, good for the highest in the conference.

The Beavers opened their final regular season series against the Trojans on Thursday. Oregon State is closing out its season at home for the fifth consecutive year and had tallied a 16-8 home record before Thursday’s loss to USC. The Beavers’ team ERA of 3.08 ranks second in the nation.

UCLA will close out their regular season on the road at Oregon. UCLA is riding a nine-game win streak that began May 7 against Long Beach State. Since then, UCLA has swept both Washington State and Washington, and posted a 7-0 victory over UC Irvine on May 14.

Softball
Coral Smith, Daily Bruin staff

With postseason play starting last weekend, the Pac-12 saw mixed results.

Five Pac-12 teams qualified for the NCAA tournament, but only three made it past the regionals and advanced to the next round.

Arizona State and Stanford both failed to make it out of their respective regionals. Arizona State won its first game to make it into the winners’ bracket, but then fell twice in two days to No. 8 seed Alabama, which went on to win the regional.

Stanford, on the other hand, fell into the losers’ bracket early and could not claw its way out, losing to Boise State in two consecutive games to be eliminated.

On the winners’ side, No. 2 seed UCLA will be joined in the super regionals by No. 3 seed Washington and No. 6 seed Arizona.

Washington swept through its regional, not dropping a game and giving up only one run over the weekend, while Arizona also went undefeated in their region, putting three Pac-12 teams in the super regionals.

With the UCLA facing James Madison at home this weekend, Arizona and Washington will also host their opponents in Tucson and Seattle, respectively. Arizona State will face No. 11 seed Mississippi, and Washington will play No. 14 seed Kentucky, with the winners moving on to the Women’s College World Series starting Thursday in Oklahoma City.

Men’s Tennis
Jason Maikis, Daily Bruin reporter

The Pac-12 has nine singles and four doubles pairs competing at the NCAA individual championships.

Four Trojans, three Bruins and seven other athletes from the Pac-12 are competing in the tournament, held in Orlando, Florida, from May 20 to May 25. There is only one Pac-12 entrant left standing after the first four rounds of singles and three rounds of doubles play: the duo of senior Maxime Cressy and sophomore Keegan Smith of UCLA.

The No. 2-seeded pairing has won three straight matches to reach Friday’s semifinals. They have yet to drop a set in defeating teams from Old Dominion, Belmont, and San Diego.

No. 5 seed Brandon Holt of USC reached the deepest point in the tournament of any Pac-12 singles player. Holt claimed two straight-set victories Monday and Tuesday, before earning a three-set comeback victory over seeded Yuya Ito from Texas.

Fellow Trojans Tanner Smith and Daniel Cukierman, along with UCLA’s Smith and Utah’s Dan Little, all reached the second round of singles. Stanford’s Alexandre Rotsaert and Arizona’s Jonas Ziverts lost their opening round. UCLA’s Cressy and freshman Govind Nanda also fell in their first matches.

Other than Cressy and Smith, the only Pac-12 team to win a doubles match was Jacob Brumm and Yuta Kikuchi from California. Teams from USC and Arizona State both fell in the first round.

Play will continue with the semifinals Friday, with the championship set to conclude Saturday.