The Bruins will be traveling to Fort Worth, Texas, to challenge their first ranked opponent of the season following an opening series sweep.

No. 20 UCLA baseball (3-0) will visit No. 5 TCU (4-0) for a three-game series over the weekend. The Horned Frogs are coming off a visit to the College World Series, which the Bruins have not reached since their 2013 national championship.

“We haven’t been there, so that’ll be a new experience for us,” said coach John Savage. “Kirk and TJ (TCU head coach Kirk Saarloos and associate head coach TJ Bruce) are both really good friends, good coaches. When TJ worked at UCLA, we won a national championship together, so there’s a lot of connection there.”

Last year, UCLA faced a high-caliber opponent on the road in its second weekend of the season when it lost two of three games against then-No. 10 Vanderbilt. However, with a freshman-heavy team, a large portion of the Bruins’ roster has not experienced a road trip yet.

Sophomore right-hander Michael Barnett – who pitched five scoreless innings against Gonzaga last Sunday – said he recalls the Bruins’ early road series against the Commodores in 2023.

“I remember going to Vanderbilt last year around the same time of year,” Barnett said. “Good experience for the team – didn’t come away with a series win, but definitely showed a lot about us, and it’s going to be a good opportunity for us to keep going.”

Early into his freshman season, Barnett came in as a reliever against Vanderbilt and tallied three strikeouts across two hitless frames.

UCLA is still early into its season, and because its scheduled game against Loyola Marymount on Tuesday was rained out, TCU will be its second opponent of the year.

Savage said had the LMU game not been postponed, freshman right-handers Landon Stump, Luke Rodriguez, and Justin Lee would have been options for the midweek start.

He added that his team can learn from its opening series against Gonzaga.

“We got to be smart. We got to situational hit. You got to pitch out of problems,” Savage said. “There’s a lot of factors into winning, but we learned a lot about our guys this weekend, and we know we got to get a lot better.”

In TCU’s season-opening series against Florida Gulf Coast, it gave up 25 runs in the span of a three-game series. The Bruins allowed 10.

“I think we need to stay with it the entirety of the game – not let the score of the game determine how enthused we are cheering on our teammates,” Barnett said. “But I feel like everyone is connected, and we have a different spark this year.”

But these takeaways from the opening weekend are not the only resources the Bruins will use to prepare for their upcoming series as well as defend their early undefeated record.

Freshman catcher Cashel Dugger said the team’s preparation for TCU will center around routine.

“They (the coaching staff) prepare us well, and I think just going in with the same attitude that we had this weekend – going in and ready to beat whoever, whenever,” Dugger said.