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UCLA baseball to face Loyola Marymount following 2 straight series losses

UCLA baseball will play its first midweek game of the month Tuesday against Loyola Marymount. The Bruins are unranked for the first time since the final poll of the 2017 season. (Jeremy Chen/Daily Bruin)

Baseball


Loyola Marymount
Tuesday, 6 p.m.

Jackie Robinson Stadium
UCLA Live Stream-2

By Olivia Simons

April 13, 2021 4:12 p.m.

After dropping two consecutive series, the Bruins will take a break from conference play for a midweek contest against a familiar opponent.

UCLA baseball (17-11, 6-6 Pac-12) will host Loyola Marymount (11-18, 4-8 WCC) on Tuesday for the third and final meeting of the year between the two clubs at Jackie Robinson Stadium. The Bruins are coming off back-to-back Pac-12 series losses against Washington and Stanford, and their last nine games have all been against conference opponents.

Following its 2-4 performance over the past two weekends, UCLA dropped out of D1Baseball’s top 25 for the first time since the final poll of the 2017 season. The Bruins were ranked No. 21 last week, with their highest showing so far at No. 2 in the preseason.

Coach John Savage said not having Tuesday games has made an impact on the team’s recent lack of weekend success.

“We haven’t had a Tuesday game in a couple weeks, and I think it’s actually kind of hurt us,” Savage said. “We were playing really well on Tuesdays kind of leading into the weekend. … Hopefully we get back to business.”

UCLA defeated LMU in both contests thus far, winning the last game 13-6 behind an eight-run first inning. The blue and gold also hold a 59-48-1 advantage in the two teams’ all-time play.

Junior right-hander Nick Nastrini will take the mound for the Bruins following a three-game stint coming out of the bullpen. In his last start on March 21 against Arizona, Nastrini pitched only 3.2 innings, allowing two earned runs and five walks.

The right-hander owns a 5.20 ERA after allowing at least one earned run in all of his bullpen appearances and has a 1.6 strikeout-to-walk ratio.

Offensively, junior shortstop Matt McLain, junior second and third baseman Mikey Perez and freshman third baseman Kyle Karros have all made consistent contributions to the Bruins’ run production recently. McLain and Perez each recorded a pair of long balls against Stanford while Karros knocked in six base hits throughout the series. The trio drove in nine runs in the three-game set in Northern California.

Savage said he has been impressed in particular with how Karros as a true freshman has been able to catch up to the speed of the game.

“He’s really grown,” Savage said. “I think he’s playing at the speed of the game. It takes a while for freshmen to learn the speed of the game at this level. Everybody’s faster, all the pitchers are better, runners are faster and the game itself, it’s moved quicker. It just seems like he’s got a pretty good grasp of it right now, and he’s playing well and he’s making a pretty big impression.”

As a team, UCLA holds a .278 batting average compared to LMU’s .252, and a .798 on-base-plus-slugging mark compared to its opponent’s .685. The Bruins have also hit 23 home runs while the Lions have only managed 11 round-trippers so far this season.

Junior right-hander Sean Mullen said the Tuesday contest will help the Bruins see how well they can come back from their past two weekends against a scrappy Lions team.

“It’s going to be a really, really good test,” Mullen said. “We clearly had a dogfight –really long, long weekend, lot of long days. … It’s going to be a good test to see where we’re at next week, how tough we are, how we can bounce back. LMU’s always a scrappy team, got a lot of scrappy players, so it’ll be a good test for us to see how we can bounce back after a long, tough weekend.”

First pitch against the Lions is set for 6 p.m. on Tuesday.

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Olivia Simons | Quad editor
Simons is the 2023-2024 Quad editor. She was previously the 2022-2023 managing editor, an assistant Sports editor on the baseball, women's tennis, men's tennis, swim and dive and rowing beats and a reporter on the baseball and women's tennis beats. She is also a fourth-year student from Oakland, California.
Simons is the 2023-2024 Quad editor. She was previously the 2022-2023 managing editor, an assistant Sports editor on the baseball, women's tennis, men's tennis, swim and dive and rowing beats and a reporter on the baseball and women's tennis beats. She is also a fourth-year student from Oakland, California.
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