It’s selection Monday in the clubhouse at UCLA’s Jackie Robinson Stadium and ESPN’s college baseball selection show opens with a montage of images and plays from last year’s College World Series.
A shot of UCLA’s junior ace Gerrit Cole is followed by an explosion of cheers from the locker room where the team is watching the show that decides its postseason fate. A quick cutaway to South Carolina’s Jackie Bradley Jr. ““ the 2010 World Series’ Most Outstanding Player ““ draws a few groans and muffled boos. Not long after, successive looks at recently named Pac-10 Pitcher of the Year Trevor Bauer and Chris Giovinazzo, who is one of only two Bruin seniors, send the room into a frenzy once more.
Then, a clip of South Carolina’s Whit Merrifield’s RBI-single to end the series and UCLA’s title hopes hits the room like a knockout punch.
No boos, jeers or moans, just deafening silence.
And so begins the 2011 UCLA baseball team’s journey back to Omaha, Neb.
After a trip to Arizona State that turned UCLA’s Pac-10 title and NCAA regional hosting hopes into reality, the final pieces of the puzzle fell into place Monday morning.
Cole, for one, thinks last year’s historic run, coupled with this season’s trials, will help his team.
“It’s a calming feeling when you’re in a playoff game, or when you’re coming down the stretch, when you come into a situation that you’ve seen before,” the All-Pac-10 honorable mention said.
Jackie Robinson Stadium will play host to the Los Angeles Regional, in which the Bruins (33-22) are the No. 1 seed. Joining UCLA will be No. 2-seeded Fresno State (40-14), No. 3-seeded UC Irvine (39-16) and No. 4-seeded San Francisco (31-23).
Despite having played both San Francisco and UC Irvine this season, compiling a 4-1 record against the two clubs, coach John Savage still doesn’t feel that gives his No. 17 team a big advantage.
“I think they probably feel the same way as we do. USF knows us, we know them,” he said. “Irvine knows us, we know them.”
San Francisco came to Jackie Robinson Stadium on season-opening weekend and got swept by UCLA, but that was back in February. Junior first baseman Dean Espy, current holder of the Bruins’ best batting average, knows it will be a different game this time around.
“I think we’re way better than we were then,” Espy said. “There was a lot of feeling for our swings and feeling for the game.”
At times, top-seeded teams in regionals will change their pitching rotation, diverting from the regular season schedule to save the best arms for a matchup with the No. 2 or No. 4 seed later in the weekend. Savage didn’t go that route last season, trotting out Cole to earn a 15-1 victory over Kent State.
It appears Savage is going to stick with what won him a regional last year. The team’s website said Wednesday that Cole will indeed get the start Friday night.
If UCLA is able to advance out of its regional this weekend and Virginia does the same, the Bruins will be headed to Charlottesville, Va., to face the tournament’s No. 1 overall seed and the nation’s No. 2 team, the Virginia Cavaliers.
In true form, Savage isn’t thinking about that just yet.
“Anybody who’s looking ahead out of our regional is setting themselves up a little bit,” he said. “So we’re not looking ahead.”