PCAA Championships : Titans End Season With a Loss to Fresno, 14-6

Cal State Fullerton’s worst baseball season in 12 years came to a fitting--almost suicidal--end here Saturday night as the Titans missed everything but the team bus en route to a humiliating 14-6 defeat to Fresno State.

The 15th-ranked Bulldogs (41-20) took more than three hours to make short work of the Titans and sweep the best-of-three Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. championship series, keeping defending national champion Fullerton (36-32-1) out of NCAA playoff competition for the first time in 11 years.

Clearly, the Titan team on display Saturday does not belong in postseason play. Fullerton was charged with five errors, but the Titans continually missed fly balls, ground balls, their cut-off man, pick-off throws, third strikes . . . just to name a few of the more obvious ones.

“I saw it, but I’m not sure I believe it,” Fullerton Coach Augie Garrido said. “But I saw it, so I guess it’s real.

“Fresno State played outstanding ball, they beat on us like a drum.”

The two starting pitchers--Fullerton’s Mike Schooler and Fresno’s Ken Crew--brought a combined record of 19-2 into the game, but if any of the 3,204 on hand at Beiden Field were looking forward to a pitching duel, they were disappointed in a hurry.

Nine runs crossed the plate in the first two innings.

Crew, who struggled with his control all night and yielded 7 hits and 11 walks, managed to go the distance, thanks mainly to a Bulldog offense which pounded out 15 hits and scored in every inning but the third and eighth.

“I thought both games would be closer (Fresno won Friday, 9-7), better pitched games,” Fresno Coach Bob Bennett said. “But our kids did what they had to do offensively. We just kept coming at them.”

After Fresno jumped out to a 3-0 lead, it looked as if this one would be decided faster than the Grenada conflict. But the Titans got to a touted Bulldog pitcher early for the second time in as many nights.

With one out in the first, Fullerton left fielder Keith Watkins, battling a setting sun, dropped Eric Fox’s fly ball in the corner for a gift double. Joe Xavier lined a single to right and then Bob Bafia deposited Schooler’s first delivery in the parking lot beyond the fence in left-center for a 3-0 Bulldog advantage.

But Crew, like PCAA Player of the Year Mark Gardner Friday night, was struggling with his control and the Titans took a 4-3 lead on three hits and three walks in the second. Crew walked Jose Mota with the bases loaded and then yielded a two-run single to Shane Turner and an RBI double to John Fishel.

Fresno State came right back in the bottom of the second, though, and Fox’s long two-run homer to dead center made it 5-4, the third lead change in two innings.

Then, Fullerton’s season of frustration was both epitomized and put to rest in the next three innings as the Bulldogs pulled away for good. Three singles and a pair of Mota errors contributed to a three-run fourth. Fresno added one in the fifth and then the whole thing unraveled in the sixth as two Bulldogs reached base after striking out and three eventually scored on a calamity of Titan physical and mental errors and one hit.

“As soon as we put up a run, they put up two,” Garrido said. “Fresno has the stuff to make it happen. I think they’ll do well in the regionals and the World Series.”

When asked about the Titans’ chances of receiving an at-large invitation to the NCAA playoffs, Garrido simply laughed.

Titan Notes

A good portion of Fullerton’s starting lineup spent much of Saturday afternoon sunbathing and frolicking in their hotel pool, but they didn’t seem to be having nearly as much fun a few hours later as they bungled and bobbled their way to the embarrassing season-ending defeat. . . . The Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. athletic directors and baseball coaches have voted to change the conference format next season, making this the first and last conference championship series. Beginning next year, each team will play a three-game series (alternating home and away every other season) with every other PCAA member. There will be no North and South divisions. The team with the best record after the 21-game conference schedule will be the champion and get the automatic NCAA berth. A one-game playoff would be held in event of a tie.