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Well here we go. UCLA baseball's (43-13) second season start tonight. The number 1 seeded Bruins are playing hosts in a baseball regional for the first time since 1986, as they take on number 4 seeded Kent State (39-23) Golden Flashes. Bruins are also the no. 6 national seed in this season's tournament, which marks the first time Bruins have ever earned one of the national seeds.
Bruins have of course established all kinds of school record this season. We have every reason to feel good about our program heading in the right direction under Coach John Savage, who also happened to be the architect of one of the other programs in this Los Angeles Regional (UCI). While this year's Bruins' team anchored by young underclassmen such as Gerrit Cole (tonight's starter), Trevor Bauer, Tyler Rahmatulla, Dean Espy, Beau Amaral, Cody Keefer and Cody Regis (along with seniors to be Niko Gallego and Brett Krill) have been built for a run in next year, it would be a huge lift to our program, if we can make past this regional (even though it has been stacked as the "Group of Death.")
Sure hope the Bruin fans are out in force tonight (while having a great time and welcoming the fans of other programs). The first pitch is scheduled for this afternoon at 6:00 pm PST. You can also follow along with GameTracker or get updates on Ryan's UCLA baseball twitter. So might as well thread this as our game thread with updates, thoughts, analysis and anything else.
GO BRUINS.