College Update: NCAA regionals await local baseball products

The following are updates on local athletes at the collegiate level.

Edgar Montes (Glendale Community College, 2013) University of Nevada, Las Vegas baseball junior: Montes’ NCAA Division I debut season has been a good one, and it’s still going strong.

Montes and his UNLV teammate Matt McCallister are no strangers to postseason runs from their days at Glendale Community College and they’re on another one now.

UNLV enters NCAA tournament play with a 35-23 record after going 20-10 in the Mountain West Conference to tie for the regular season title with New Mexico. UNLV then lost to San Diego State in the championship game of the conference tournament, but earned a berth in the Corvallis Regional.

The Rebels, the regional No. 2 seed, will take on No. 3 UC Irvine at 2 p.m. Friday in a game airing on ESPN3. Oregon State is the top seed and will host North Dakota State at 8 p.m. on ESPN2, with the regional continuing through the weekend.

It’s been an outstanding year for UNLV and for former Vaqueros Montes and McCallister, who each earned all-conference second-team recognition.

Montes, a starting outfielder, is riding a six-game hitting streak in which he’s gone nine for 22 with four runs, three runs batted in and three extra-base hits. For the season, Montes is hitting .303 (53 for 175) over 54 games — 48 of them starts. In addition, he’s tallied 33 runs, 27 RBI, 13 doubles, three home runs, a .440 slugging percentage, 15 walks and a .358 on-base percentage.

McCallister, the team’s starting shortstop, has started 56 games for UNLV and is hitting .261 (49 for 188) with 30 runs, 21 RBI, 14 doubles, three home runs, 14 walks and a .332 on-base percentage.

Elliot Surrey (Crescenta Valley High, 2012) UC Irvine baseball sophomore: Despite a rough stretch to end the season, UC Irvine and Surrey are headed to the NCAA Division I tournament, beginning play Friday in the Corvallis Regional in Oregon.

UC Irvine enters with a 35-22 record after going 15-9 for third place in the Big West Conference after losing six in a row to end the regular season and eight of nine.

Unfortunately for Surrey, a former All-Area and All-CIF selection, his worst start of the season came in his last stint, a 10-1 conference loss to Long Beach State on Saturday. Surrey tossed five innings, allowing six runs (four earned) with seven hits allowed, four strikeouts and three walks.

Nonetheless, Surrey has put up stellar numbers in a breakthrough season.

In 93 1/3 innings he’s posted a 2.12 earned-run average with 62 strikeouts to 21 walks. Always fundamentally sound, he’s also got a 1.000 fielding percentage on the mound.

Entering the postseason, Surrey owns a 6-4 record, but is 0-2 with three no-decisions over his last five starts. It’s hardly been his doing, though, as his four starts previous to the Long Beach State loss saw him allow a combined four runs in 28 2/3 innings.

In a 2-1 loss to Fullerton on May 17, he threw seven innings without giving up a run for a no-decision. On May 10, he took a hard-luck 1-0 loss to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, throwing a complete game and allowing one run. His previous two starts were wins for UC Irvine, but Surrey didn’t factor in the decision despite registering quality starts in both.

Surrey and Co. will look to turn things around in the postseason when the third-seeded Anteaters take on No. 2 UNLV on Friday at 2 p.m. live on ESPN3, with top-seeded Oregon State taking on North Dakota State later in the day.

David Olmedo-Barrera (St. Francis High, 2012) Cal State Fullerton baseball sophomore: Perhaps not coincidentally, Olmedo-Barrera has become an everyday starter for the Titans and they finished the regular season on a roll heading into the NCAA Tournament.

Fullerton won seven straight games to conclude the regular season with the former Golden Knight starting all of them. Fullerton’s last defeat, on May 11 against UC Riverside, was the last time Olmedo-Barrera came off the bench. During the team’s winning streak, Olmedo-Barrera hit safely in five of seven games, including a two-for-three performance with two runs and a run batted in on May 16 at UC Irvine and a two-for-six day with a run and two RBI against USC on May 20.

A former All-Area and All-Mission League standout, Olmedo-Barrera worked himself into the starting lineup as a regular beginning the last week of April.

Fullerton is 32-22 after a 14-10 mark in the Big West Conference, which was good enough to take fourth in conference and earn an NCAA berth. The Titans will travel to the Stillwater Regional, hosted by Oklahoma State. It is the 23rd straight NCAA postseason appearance for the third-seeded Titans, who open up against second-seeded Nebraska on Friday at 10 a.m. PDT in a game televised on ESPNU. Top-seeded Oklahoma State will play No. 4 Binghamton later in the day.

Olmedo-Barrera, a 2012 40th-round Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft pick by the Oakland Athletics, has played in 35 games thus far and has been the team’s designated hitter. He’s hitting .250 (22 for 88), has hit safely in four of his last five games, with 12 RBI, eight runs and five walks.

Alyssa Sovereign (Crescenta Valley High, 2010) Penn State softball senior: The former Falcons All-Area star culminated her four-year run with the Nittany Lions.

She finished her career on a five-game hitting streak to end a season in which she started in all 49 of her team’s games.

While Sovereign ended the season with a five-game hitting streak, Penn State lost its last 12 games to end the season at 14-35, 5-18 in the Big Ten Conference.

Sovereign, who made just three errors in the outfield and ended with a .979 fielding percentage, hit .234 (32 for 137) with 15 walks for a .316 on-base percentage. She also had 22 runs and nine runs batted in.

Meghan Spencer (Glendale High, 2013) Oxford College of Emory soccer freshman: Though her season ended long ago, the former Nitros softball and soccer player reaped some postseason accolades recently.

At the Oxford College athletic awards dinner and ceremony, Spencer was bestowed the Judy Greer Award for Outstanding Athletic Achievement by a Student-Athlete and as the women’s soccer team’s offensive player of the year.

Though listed as a defender, Spencer put up some big offensive numbers for Oxford with 21 goals and four assists, including eight multiple-goal games.

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Follow Grant Gordon on Twitter: @TCNGrantGordon.