FanPost

Savage's Bruins Take on USC

From the diaries. This series gets started tonight. If you are at this game and have pictures please share them by posting here or emailing us at bruinsnation@gmail.com. GO BRUINS. -N

We may not have football or hoops for a while longer, but junkies like myself can try to get their fix by branching out.  UCLA baseball has a key series coming up this weekend against the Trojans with both playoff and rivalry implications.

Bragging rights and positioning in the Pac-10 standings will be on the line this week when the UCLA baseball team (25-20, 8-7 Pac-10) hosts cross-town rival USC (24-22, 10-8 Pac-10) for a three-game conference series beginning Friday, May 12 at Jackie Robinson Stadium. The Bruins return home after a five game, 16-day road swing and will try to win their fifth-consecutive home series on the season.

Check this out for this weekend's matchups (and a bunch of stats/trivia).

As Nestor has noted, Coach John Savage seems to have the program back on track, knows the expectations and is not afraid of them.

Now, regionals is not only one of their goals, it has also become an expectation.

"Our goal is to battle for a Pac-10 championship," UCLA coach John Savage said. "We want to make regionals and be in the top tier of our conference."

And people are starting to take notice that Savage has put UCLA back on the college baseball map.

Not only is the standard UCLA-USC rivalry involved, each school is in the hunt for the Pacific-10 Conference championship.

At the moment, Oregon State is first with an 11-4 record, followed by USC at 10-8 with UCLA and Arizona State tied for third at 8-7.

There's an urge to call Oregon State the unlikely leader. But the Beavers are defending champions.

Having UCLA in the hunt is what is unlikely.

Though they dropped a series against Cal last weekend, that doesn't take away from their impressive turn around thus far.

Not only are the Bruins in the process of a complete turnaround from last year's 15-win season, but they are also in position to have one of UCLA baseball's best seasons in recent memory.

Bear in mind that this Bruin team was picked to finish eighth out of nine teams in the Pac-10. With excellent starting pitching from juniors Hector Ambriz, Dave Huff and Tyson Brummett, the Bruins have been in a position to win every Pac-10 series so far this season. All three starters have won Pac-10 Pitcher of the Week honors this year.

Hopefully they can pick things up again and beat USC.  I may even try to swing down for a game.

Finally, a quick congrats to UCLA alumni and Toronto rookie pitcher Casey Janssen for recording his first major league victory this past Sunday - even if he just manhandled one of the least-threatening lineups in the majors (with an assist to UCLA alum Troy Glaus who homered).  As some (not me, I'll freely admit) may recall:

Janssen played at UCLA from 2001-2004 and was the Bruins' ace on the 2004 squad that went to the NCAA Tournament. After a senior season where he went 10-4 with a 3.16 ERA, he was drafted in the fourth round by the Blue Jays.

GO BRUINS.

This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of BruinsNation's (BN) editors. It does reflect the views of this particular fan though, which is as important as the views of BN's editors.

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