Bruins Cruise To 8-1 Win Over Oregon To Take Series

by Ryan Rosenblatt on May 3, 2009 4:53 PM PDT in Baseball Comment 9 comments

After dropping the series opener, UCLA bounced back to beat Oregon yesterday and were able to defeat the Ducks 8-1 today in Eugene, OR to capture the series. Charles Brewer earned his third win of the season for the Bruins with six innings of work in which he allowed only one run and six hits.

With Brewer cruising, Gabe Cohen came to the plate to leadoff the third and promptly hit the second pitch he saw out to left center. It was Cohen's third home run of the season and it gave UCLA a 1-0 lead.

Cohen got the offense going again in the fifth when he hit a one out single to left and was picked up by Niko Gallego, who hit a 2-2 pitch into the right center gap. The hit was good for a double and allowed Cohen to score all the way from first.

Oregon got that run back in the bottom half of of the inning and threated for more, but Brewer got some help from his defense. After a ground-rule double cut the UCLA lead to 2-1, the Ducks still had runners on second and third with only one out. Gino Aielli was able to scoop up a grounder to him at third though and get the runner on third into a rundown before recording the out. A simple grounder to short then was all it took for Brewer to get out of the fifth, still leading 2-1.

The Bruins put the nail in the Ducks' coffin in the seventh, even if they didn't do much hitting. A pair of walks had runners on first and second for the Bruins with one out. Steve Rodriguez reached on an infield single to load the bases and Eddie Murray got a squeeze down to score a run. Now up 3-1, pinch-hitter Chris Giovinazzo walked to load the bases again and Casey Haerther was hit by a pitch to force a run in. Then, Cody Decker was walked to make it 5-1 and the bases were still loaded. A pair of wild pitches scored two runs and Blair Dunlap brought a close to the scoring with a single to make it 8-1.

The pair of Bruins who followed Brewer were a little shaky as Jason Novak and Rob Rasmussen combined to throw one inning, allowing a combined one hit and four walks. Neither allowed a run though before turning the ball over to Matt Grace who retired the six batters he faced in order to finish out the game.

UCLA's corner outfielders led the way at the plate as Cohen went 2-3 with a homer, two runs and a RBI, while Justin Uribe was also 2-3

The Bruins are now 22-22 on the year, which has them at .500 for the first time since the season's fourth game. They are 13-8 in Pac-10 play and thanks to Stanford's series win at Washington St., UCLA is now second place in the conference.

The Bruins will look to get back over the .500 mark on Tuesday when they return home for a game versus a 9-30 Cal St. Bakrsfield club. First pitch is at 6:00 pm and admission is only $2. As always, you can follow along with the Bruins on GameTracker via the official site. You can also get game updates, Bruins in the pros updates, updates on UCLA commits, thoughts on the program, key information and regional updates on my UCLA baseball twitter.

Pac 10 Standings
1) Arizona St..........16-5
2) UCLA................ 13-8
3) Washington St...11-7
Oregon St..........11-7
5) Washington.......10-8
6) Southern Cal....10-11
Stanford............10-11
8) Arizona..............8-13
9) California...........6-15
10) Oregon............4-14

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Comments

We have what 12 games left?

rye how many games do you think we need to win to make the tournament and what are our realistic chances?

by Nestor on May 3, 2009 6:10 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs

I've been saying that I think 30 wins gets us in

29 could do it, but we’d need some help. Our next four are against an awful Cal St. Bakersfield team and three against a Cal team that has been the worst in the Pac-10 since April 1. We need three of these four and four of four is a possibility. Our last two weekend series are against Fullerton and Arizona St. We’ll probably need to win one of those two so we can put another high quality series win on our resume. It’s very possible, but there’s still work to do.

Right now, I’m just looking at these next four. If we win all four then were at 26-22 and can go 4-4 the rest of the way. If we take only three of four then we need to go 5-3 to finish against some very tough teams so we’d have to play very well.

by Ryan Rosenblatt on May 3, 2009 6:38 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

the 10 game losing streak early in the season

was a killer.

by Nestor on May 4, 2009 4:35 AM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Fantastic job Rye

I’ve never been a huge follower of our baseball program, but I’m loving your updates: it makes it so easy to keep up with the men lucky enough to follow in Jackie’s footsteps.

Fantastic work dude. Keep it up.

by Bellerophon on May 3, 2009 8:31 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs

this is my ignorance of college baseball talking

but do conference standings not have the same impact in baseball as they do in basketball? I find it hard to believe the 2nd place team in the Pac 10 would be left out of a regional (i’m not challenging your knowledge in any way, rye – i’m just confused).

Clearly there are more out of conference games in baseball than in basketball, so I’m assuming that’s the reason…but if there’s a different reason i’d love to hear it.

and again – thanks for the updates

by bucknellbruin on May 3, 2009 8:54 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs

It's about the same

UCLA is just a very strange team this year. I mean, when was the last time a team finished 2nd in the Pac-10 in basketball, but was only 2 games over .500 overall? It doesn’t happen often. Usually, the team that finishes 2nd in the conference has 35-40 wins and sometimes more so they’re a shoe-in. UCLA could finish 2nd in the Pac-10, but do so at .500 or even below .500. Odds are though that if they play well enough for a 2nd place Pac-10 finish, they’ll get to 30 wins and get in. 30 wins is still only 4 games over .500, but their ridiculous schedule and 2nd place Pac-10 finish would get them in.

by Ryan Rosenblatt on May 3, 2009 11:02 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Is there any effort being made

to lighten the early schedule a little bit so we don’t continuously put ourselves in the hole at the start of the season? It seems like Savage is an aggressive scheduler and we always seem to be on top of the list when it comes to strength of schedule, but is there a reason why we do this?

by Tydides on May 3, 2009 11:22 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Savage likes it

and often credits our Pac-10 success to being tested early on. Personally, I like playing a tough schedule, but this year it was waaaay over the top. Not only were we playing extremely difficult teams, but we played four consecutive weekends on the road. That’s just ridiculous.

Next season we will have six out of conference weekends (although it may be only five if we skip a weekend for finals). I expect us to continue to play Fullerton and I believe we’re playing both Georgia and Nebraska (one home and one away). With the rest of our weekends I’d like to see us play decent teams, but not a power. Someone like Portland, St. Mary’s or Pacific is the type of team we should schedule to finish up our schedule.

by Ryan Rosenblatt on May 4, 2009 12:45 AM PDT up reply actions 0 recs