Cody Poteet Shines As UCLA Downs Irvine 8-1

Cody Poteet had the worst outing of his young career last week, struggling to find the strike zone and failing to make it out of the third inning, but you wouldn't have known it on Tuesday night. The freshman bounced back with aplomb, striking out five and walking none in six scoreless, two hit innings. From there, it was just a matter of getting some offense, which the Bruins got plenty of en route to a 8-1 win over UC Irvine that pushes them to 28-13 on the season.

Five Bruins picked up multiple hits in the 13-hit effort, led by Brenton Allen's three-hit, one RBI, one run outing. Kevin Kramer did his part, too, driving in three and scoring two runs, while Eric Filia, Pat Gallagher, and Christoph Bono all joined Kramer in the two-hit club.

Poteet may have had flashbacks to last week after allowing a single to leadoff the game, but he quickly made sure his rocky outing was a thing of the past by retiring the next nine batters. It was a clinic in efficiency, never once reaching a three-ball count.

With the right-hander in a groove, it was just a matter of the offense providing him support and after threatening in each of the first two innings, they came through in the third. Most of the Bruins' work was just standing there, as Filia was bit by a pitch and Pat Valaika and Cody Regis walked to load the bases, but then Shane Zeile had to make it count. He did, lifting a fly ball to right, which allowed Filia to tag and score for a 1-0 lead.

Two innings later, UCLA added to their lead, but this time it was Zeile doing the scoring. He reached on an error then took second on Gallagher's single before Allen came through two-out RBI single to make it 2-0.

Poteet got even more support the following inning, which Kramer led off with a double to right. Filia smacked the first pitch he saw into left for a single to score Kramer and Poteet was able to exit the game with his team up 3-0.

After James Kaprielian worked a scoreless seventh, the Bruins put the game out of reach in the bottom half of the inning. Gallagher, Bono and Allen all singled to load the bases for Carroll, who drew a walk to force a run in. Kramer then smoked a pitch to left center for a three-RBI triple and UCLA had a 7-0 lead. The Anteaters then threw in a gift in the form of a wild pitch, allowing Kramer to score and the Bruins were well on their way to victory.

UC Irvine avoided the shutout with a run off of Zack Weiss in the eighth, but the game was well out of hand by then. David Berg entered in the ninth, which he worked through rather easily and UCLA had themselves a season sweep of UC Irvine.