OMAHA, Neb. — UCLA has won a nation-leading 106 NCAA championships in 17 sports. Not one of them is in baseball - yet.
The Bruins’ chance is here, against South Carolina, in the best-of-3 College World Series finals starting tonight.
“It’s obviously known as a basketball school with Coach Wooden and everything he did at UCLA and all the national championships and all the NBA players, and then certainly football has a rich tradition as well, and softball and gymnastics and volleyball and golf,” UCLA Coach John Savage said Sunday.
“Every day we go in the Hall of Fame room and we go in the weight room and you see all the national championships, and baseball doesn’t have anything underneath it.”
UCLA made it to the CWS 1969 and 1997 and went 0-2 each time.
The Bruins are in the finals a year after finishing 27-29 and not making the 64-team NCAA Tournament. They’ve ridden the strong pitching of starters Gerrit Cole, Trevor Bauer and Rob Rasmussen, and their offense has been timely, cranking out 15 hits in Saturday’s 10-3 victory over TCU.
South Carolina reached the CWS finals in 1975, 1977 and 2002, losing each time under the old tournament format that ended with a single national championship game. The best-of-3 finals started in 2003,a year too late for Coach Ray Tanner and the Gamecocks.
“Back when we were in this position before, we had finished on an early evening on a Friday, and we had a noon game on Saturday. It was set up for television,” Tanner said. “We were excited. We were energetic. It was a short turnaround and it wasn’t the best of three. Is that going to make it easier for us? Absolutely not. But I think it’s the way that it should be done.
“Two teams left. Best of three. You get a variety of pitchers out there in the games, whether it’s a two-game or three-game set. We’re all used to the series mentality.”
UCLA will start Cole (11-3), the New York Yankees’ 2008 first-round pick, in Game 1. Tanner said he’s deciding among Blake Cooper (12-2), Tyler Webb (3-2) and Jay Brown (3-0). Cooper has started twice in the CWS but would be coming off only three days’ rest.
The Gamecocks have won four elimination games to get to this point. They beat Oklahoma in 12 innings after being down to their last strike, and they got an improbable, complete-game, three-hitter from Michael Roth, a career situational reliever called on to start against Clemson on Friday.
South Carolina wasn’t a top-10 team in the polls until mid to late April. The Gamecocks lost the SEC regular-season title on the final weekend against Florida and went two-and-out in the SEC Tournament.
They’ve played four one run games in the NCAA Tournament, winning three of them, including Saturday’s 4-3 victory over Clemson.
“We went through a period of time where we really did have trouble scoring runs,” Tanner said. “We weren’t giving up a lot and we were playing good defense. But we took the mentality that, you know, we’ve got to win some games late. We’re going to have to win some close games.”
UCLA hopes to add a national title to the ones the school won in softball and women’s gymnastics this year. The baseball team’s opportunity has been a long time coming.
The Bruins were No. 1 in the preseason polls in 2008 but fell far short of expectations, finishing third in the Pac-10 and getting eliminated from regionals by nemesis Cal State Fullerton. In 2009, the Bruins lost nine in a row early in the season, tied for third in the conference and missed the national tournament.
College World Series
CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES
Best of 3 - All times Central TODAY’S GAME UCLA (51-15) vs. South Carolina (52-16), 6:30 p.m.
TUESDAY’S GAME UCLA vs. South Carolina, 6:30 p.m.
WEDNESDAY’S GAME x-UCLA vs. South Carolina, 6:30 p.m.
x-if necessary
Sports, Pages 15 on 06/28/2010