Home field advantage can be overrated. Not for the 2007 UCSD baseball team, however, which finished off its regular season schedule by winning the first two games, both at home, of a four-game series against No. 5 Cal State Los Angeles, then dropped the last two games on the road to finish the season with a 35-21 overall record, including 24-12 in California Collegiate Athletic Association play.
Senior outfielder Bryan Silverman is a crucial component of the 2007 UCSD baseball team, which heads into the postseason on May 10.
Besides going 2-0 at home and 0-2 on the road in their final series, the season’s trend has shown the Triton tide to be much more powerful at Triton Baseball Stadium. Overall, UCSD was superb in the confines of their home ballpark, going 24-8, while they floundered on the road, finishing at a sub-.500 mark of 11-13.
This stat would not be so damning if not for the upcoming CCAA tournament. The postseason games, which begin on May 10, hold the ticket to the NCAA West Regional bracket, the tournament that head coach Dan O’Brien and his players have made clear is UCSD’s target.
“”Our goal going in is to win the whole thing,”” sophomore Matt Cantele said. “”You don’t really want to leave anything up to anyone else.””
Senior outfielder Matt Lawson has swung a hot bat of late, hitting a home run out of PETCO Park and then batting .333 with four runs, two home runs, and five RBIs in UCSD’s latest series.
Senior David Morehead agreed, but with his years of experience with the CCAA tournament, added that you can’t get ahead of yourself.
“”[Winning the title] is definitely our goal,”” Morehead said. “”But to get that automatic bid to the regional, we are going to have to take it one game at a time because we can’t really overlook any of the opponents we are going to play; they are all pretty formidable.””
The Golden Eagles were pretty formidable, but the series was a good reminder of the capability of the UCSD offense. The Tritons put up 29 runs through the four-game series and held the Golden Eagles to only three runs in the two games at home.
“”I feel pretty good especially with this last series,”” Cantele said. “”The whole offense combined for a ton of hits in this last series and that’s definitely a good sign. Up and down the order, everyone has been stepping up. I didn’t have a great series, but everyone’s just been picking each other up. As long as everyone keeps swinging it really well, that’s all we can ask for.””
In the first game, Triton pitchers freshman Daniel Simmons and junior Nick Rodiek combined for a shutout and the offense broke a scoreless tie in the fifth inning and rolled to a 6-0 win. Simmons started the game and went six strong innings, allowing only four hits and two walks while striking out two. Rodiek relieved Simmons in the seventh inning and maintained the shutout, finishing the game with three innings of work in which he allowed only one hit.
Senior centerfielder Matt Lawson continued his hot hitting and led the Tritons from the top of the lineup, where he went 2-for-4 with a run scored and two RBIs. Senior rightfielder John Roth also went 2-for-4 and drove in two runs, giving the Triton pitchers more than enough support to pull off the win.
In the second game, UCSD could not shut out the Golden Eagles any longer, allowing single runs in both the third and fifth innings. But the Tritons responded to their 0-2 deficit with four runs in the bottom of the fifth. Bryan Silverman and Jonathan Erickson led off the inning with back-to-back doubles to get the Tritons within one run. Lawson then drove in Erickson and himself with a two-run home run to left-center field to give UCSD the lead.
The Tritons added another run in the inning and then two in the seventh and three more in the eighth inning, while Cal State Los Angeles only managed one more run in the top of the eighth, resulting in a 9-3 final score and a 2-0 series lead.
“”We were feeling really good,”” Cantele said. “”We pretty much dominated the first two games. We completely outplayed them so we were feeling really good going into the last two games. We felt like we could easily take the next two if we just kept playing the way we did. It didn’t turn out that way; we had a couple of unfortunate things happen to us in L.A. and we let that one game get away from us. But we’re completely confident in how we played this weekend. We played hard but the last two games just didn’t go our way.””
The second two games of the series, held on the Golden Eagles’ stomping grounds, did not go quite as well as the first two. In the first game in Los Angeles, the Cal State Los Angeles offense chased UCSD starting pitcher Kirby St. John from the game before closing out the third inning after the right-handed freshman allowed five runs, four earned, on seven hits and two walks.
While the Cal State Los Angeles offense piled on the runs, UCSD stayed close, trailing 5-4 after three innings and 8-6 after five. But the Golden Eagles flew out of reach with single runs in the fifth through eighth innings to pull off the 11-6 victory.
In the series finale, the nightcap of a doubleheader on May 5, both teams put on a fireworks show with 17 total runs and 29 total hits in a game decided by one run. Unfortunately, the Tritons ended up on the wrong end of the close game, falling by a final score of 9-8 to end the series, and the regular season, with a split.
The Golden Eagles’ ninth run came in the ninth inning, in walk-off fashion, as Williams singled to drive in Crowell for the winning run in the final frame.
On the UCSD side, Cantele increased his UCSD school record for home runs in a single season with his 22nd long ball of the year. Lawson also continued to rake the ball, driving his ninth ball over the fence for a home run.
With Cantele, Lawson and Morehead all hitting the ball well of late, the Tritons are poised to enter the CCAA tournament with some confidence, both in their hitters and their pitching.
“”It was awesome to see our pitchers do well and I think it was really good for the pitchers too,”” Cantele said. “”It was really good for the team because we have confidence in them. Now, hopefully it will give them confidence in themselves to go out and know that they can shut down a team like Cal State Los Angeles.””
While it was great to see the Triton pitching excel in their last series, it will be far more important in the tournament, when UCSD will be facing better hitters and pitchers who have the same desire for the conference title in mind.
“”It’s really important to have solid pitching because you start facing better pitching from the other team when they throw their aces and you’re going to find yourselves in a lot of low-scoring ballgames,”” Cantele said. “”I think we have the pitching and the depth so it’s just a matter of execution on offense and defense and putting it together.””
However the Tritons put things together, they will have to win a total of three games to win the CCAA title. And from the way some Tritons are talking, they are not planning on wasting their time.
“”Whoever we are playing we have to beat,”” Morehead said. “”This is the point where every game matters. The way the tournament works, if we win three in a row then we win the tournament. So that’s our goal; win three games and we’ll be conference champions regardless of who we play.””
While the Tritons pay little attention to who they are facing, Morehead admits that there is something extra on the line in the games against Chico State since the Wildcats earned the bid to the NCAA tournament, despite the fact that UCSD beat them in the CCAA tournament final.
Now, however, the rules have changed and the winner of the conference tournament gets an automatic bid to the West Regional. Still, Morehead said that there is extra incentive to beat the Wildcats.
“”There’s always something really sweet about beating Chico,”” Morehead said. “”They are always the top dog in the conference; they are always the team in the tournament. So they are the team with the bullseye on their back and anytime you can knock off that team it’s that much better.””
