College Baseball / Bob Cuomo : The Bruins’ Hitting Comes as a Surprise to Coach Gary Adams

UCLA Coach Gary Adams picked the Bruins to finish last in the Pacific 10 Southern Division because he figured that since the best players from last season’s last-place team had either signed pro contracts or graduated this team could do no better.

Adams’ main concern was offense. Last year’s 28-32 club--8-22 in league play--batted .292, hit 60 home runs and averaged 6.93 runs. How could he replace players such as Shane Mack, Lindsay Meggs and Pete Beall, a trio that totaled 34 homers and 139 runs? In all, players who accounted for 52 homers didn’t return.

Well, Adams needn’t have worried about the offense. His hitters are doing just fine. UCLA played its 57th game Sunday, and Gary Berman hit the Bruins’ 60th homer. The team batting average is a respectable .299, and the Bruins are averaging 7.01 runs.

Adams was right about one thing. UCLA isn’t going to win the conference title. His last-place prediction will probably be wrong, though. The Bruins are fifth in the six-team league with a 9-15 record--they’re 29-27-1 overall. They lead USC by five games with six games left. They also have a shot at finishing fourth, since they trail Arizona State by three games.

“We’re playing well right now,” Adams said Sunday at Jackie Robinson Stadium before the Bruins beat Arizona State for the second straight day. “We are hitting. We went through a spell there when we didn’t hit, but we’ve come out of it.”

What, then, has prevented UCLA from challenging for the title? It’s the same problem that has plagued the Bruins in recent years--pitching. This time it’s the inability of the relief pitchers to protect leads. UCLA has lost at least five conference games when the other team scored in its final at-bat.

“What hurts us is not having a stopper, someone who can come in late in the game and hold the opposition,” Adams said. “You have to have that.”

Said Bruin assistant coach Dennis Delany: “We’re the best eight-inning team around. We’d probably win all of our games if they were eight innings long.”

Perhaps surprisingly, sophomore second baseman Torey Lovullo of the Bruins ranks among the club leaders in almost all the major categories on offense.

Lovullo, a switch-hitter, has the third-highest batting average, .332, is second in homers with 9, is tied for the lead in hits with 62, leads in runs scored with 43 and has 32 RBIs.

What makes those numbers all the more impressive is that in 51 games last season, Lovullo batted only .219, did not hit a homer, drove in just 14 runs and scored 23 runs. Of his 32 hits, only one was for extra bases, that being a double.

Another pleasant surprise is sophomore catcher Todd Zeile, who missed eight games early in the season with a concussion. He leads the team in homers with 11, has the second-highest average, .347, and is tied for second in RBIs with 37. In 28 games last season, Zeile batted .306, hit one homer and drove in 10 runs.

UCLA proved that it also can win in its final at-bat last weekend against Arizona State. In fact, the Bruins did it twice.

Hector Cano’s two-out single drove in Gary Gorski with the third run of the inning in the Bruins’ 11-10 victory Saturday in the second game of the series. There were two out Sunday when pinch-hitter Rich Smith’s single drove in Gorski from second base to give the Bruins a 6-5 win.

USC, meanwhile, continues to lose. The Trojans were swept by Stanford at Dedeaux Field and have lost eight straight and 11 of their last 12. The Trojans (20-38) set a school record for defeats when they lost for the 37th time Saturday night. The 1982 team was 23-36.

The Trojans are faring even worse in Pacific 10 Southern Division play. The three Stanford defeats extended USC’s league losing streak to 13, which surpasses the record of 11 set by UCLA earlier this season. USC, 4-20 in the Pac-10, must win four of its final six games to avoid having the worst record in conference history. UCLA was 7-23 in 1981.

As USC’s losses mount, so does its pitching staff’s earned-run average. It’s 5.92 after a yield of 30 earned runs, 42 hits, including 16 for extra bases, and 24 walks in the Stanford series. In 515 innings this season, Trojan pitchers have given up 607 hits and 359 walks.

Baseball Notes

Pepperdine is the first West Coast team to clinch a conference title. The Waves won the West Coast Athletic Conference Saturday by beating Loyola Marymount, 3-1, in the first game of a doubleheader. They also won the second game to complete a sweep of the three-game series. Pepperdine, 18-3 and 41-9-1 overall, leads second-place Santa Clara by six games with three games left. By winning the WCAC, the Waves earned an automatic berth in the NCAA tournament. It’ll be their first playoff appearance since 1982. . . . The winning pitcher in Pepperdine’s title-clinching victory was Jon Smith, a senior left-hander who has emerged as the Waves’ No. 3 starter behind Scott Marrett and Mike Fetters. He pitched a four-hitter, raising his record to 7-0 and lowering his ERA to 3.09. In 70 innings, he has allowed just 53 hits and 28 walks. Marrett won the series opener Friday and has a 12-0 record with a 1.34 ERA. Fetters is 9-2 with a 2.65 ERA and has saved five games. . . . Marrett, Fetters, Smith and several other Pepperdine players were at Dedeaux Field Saturday night to do some scouting of Stanford, the team they will probably meet in the playoffs. Stanford is 19-5 in the Pacific 10 Southern Division after sweeping USC, and leads California and Arizona, both 14-10, by five games with six games left. The Cardinal, 34-10 overall, can clinch at least a tie for the title with one victory this weekend at Arizona State. . . . “I like our position,” Stanford Coach Mark Marquess said Saturday before the second game of the USC series. “We still have eight games left, but if we continue to do what we’ve been doing, execute and play well, we’ll be all right.” . . . Hitting and scoring runs are two of the things Stanford is doing well. The Cardinal batted .359 and scored 43 runs against the Trojans. In conference games Stanford is hitting .355 and averaging 10.08 runs. Overall, the Cardinal is hitting .321 and averaging 8.86 runs. . . . Even shortstop John Verducci, the No. 9 hitter in the lineup, got into the act against USC. Verducci, who entered the series with a .263 average, went 7 for 12 and drove in seven runs. . . . Add UCLA: The Bruins had lost 14 straight games to Arizona State, including their previous five meetings this season, before beating the Sun Devils Saturday, 11-10.