College Baseball / Bob Cuomo : Pitchers Get Lions’ Share of Credit

In late March of last year, about the halfway point of his first season as head coach at Loyola Marymount, Dave Snow said that his top priority for building the program was pitching. It was imperative to have pitchers who could win at the Division I level, he said. He also said that it probably would take at least two or three years to transform Loyola into a winner.

Snow was right about the pitching. Tim Layana, Mark Stomp, Jeff Goettsch and Eric Reinholtz compare favorably with the top four of any other college staff. Their combined record of 35-7 certainly speaks for itself.

As for the time required to turn the struggling program around, well, one out of two isn’t bad. So Snow was off by a year. Who’s counting, anyway?

Snow surely isn’t. Neither are the Lions. Last week they were the No. 1 team in the country in the Collegiate Baseball/ESPN poll.

Loyola beat Cal State Fullerton, 10-6, a week ago Tuesday for its seventh consecutive victory and 20th win in its last 21 games. But over the weekend the Lions lost the first two games of a West Coast Athletic Conference series to Pepperdine, 2-1 and 4-3.

As a result, Loyola dropped to fifth in this week’s rankings. But hey, there’s nothing wrong with fifth. After all, before this season, the Lions had never been ranked.

Loyola won the third game of the Pepperdine series, 14-4, raising its overall record to 38-9, by far the best in school history. Of greater importance, though, is that the Lions still are in first place in the WCAC. They’re 15-3, half a game ahead of defending champion Pepperdine, which is 16-5.

Loyola has six league games left, three at home this weekend against the University of San Diego, which it swept earlier this month at San Diego, and three at Nevada Reno. Pepperdine has three games left at Santa Clara.

Should Loyola win the WCAC title, it will be the Lions’ first since 1973.

Last season, Loyola lost its first six games but finished with a 27-28 record. The Lions, who also lost five of their first six WCAC games, were fourth in the seven-team league at 12-12. Not too bad a year, considering that Snow inherited a team that finished seventh in the eight-team SCBA with a 10-18 record and was 23-38 overall.

Before taking the Loyola job, Snow, 36, was the pitching coach at Cal State Fullerton. In 1984 he turned the weakest part of the team into what Fullerton Coach Augie Garrido said was its strength and the main reason the Titans won the NCAA title.

Snow also coached at Valley College for five years and won four Metropolitan Conference titles and a state junior college championship.

“I think we’re definitely overachievers,” Snow said of his Lions. “But it doesn’t really surprise me.

“If you can get the kids to be receptive, get them to believe in themselves and to play to their ability, they’ll be successful.

There’s nothing like a few quick wins to make believers out of ballplayers. The Lions won their first six games, all against United States International University and Cal State Los Angeles. The following week they beat UCLA, won two of three from Arizona State in Tempe, and beat Fresno State.

“We got off to a good start and they experienced success. That makes it easier to believe,” Snow said. “And we had five tough games in seven days and we won four. That helped us. It gave us confidence.”

The pitching, particularly by Layana and Stomp, each of whom has a 12-2 record, obviously is a big reason for the turnaround, but it’s not the main reason, according to Snow.

“The strength of the team, the reason for this success, is our late-season hitting,” he said.

In the seven straight wins before the Pepperdine series, Loyola scored 118 runs on 107 hits. For the season, the Lions were hitting .331 and averaging 9 runs and 10 hits a game. In WCAC games they were hitting .355 and averaging 12 runs and 12 hits.

College Baseball Notes Dave Snow isn’t the only coach impressed with Loyola’s strong showing this season. Asked to appraise the Lions, Pepperdine’s Dave Gorrie said: “That’s a very good club. They have a good third baseman, a good shortstop, a good center fielder, and good pitching. They have some guys who can run. And they hit. They can put together an inning.” . . . The third baseman is Chris Donnels, a sophomore. Donnels, the Lions’ cleanup hitter, has been doing just that. He leads the WCAC in home runs and RBIs. Through the Pepperdine series, he had 14 homers, 65 RBIs and a .354 average. The shortstop is Carl Fraticelli, a sophomore who has good range and a very strong arm. The center fielder is senior Billy Bean, who began the week with a .368 average, 5 homers and 49 RBIs. Bean, a fine defensive player, has six assists. In the second game of Saturday’s doubleheader, he made a play that the Angels’ Gary Pettis could be proud of. He raced into deep left-center, dived, and while completely outstretched, caught a sinking line drive hit by Chris Sloniger.

Pepperdine’s Mike Fetters had a strong outing in Saturday’s seven-inning first game. The junior right-hander yielded three runs and six hits, including homers by Jim McAnany and Donnels, in the first three innings, but blanked the Lions on no hits the rest of the way. He got out of a bases-loaded jam--two walks and hit batter--in the fifth by striking out McAnany. In all, Fetters struck out 12. What made his performance all the more impressive is that he was ill all week with strep throat and Thursday had a temperature of 103. Fetters is 9-4 with a 3.27 ERA and has 118 strikeouts in 110 innings.

Tony Lewis lowered his WCAC-leading ERA to 2.39 Friday when he pitched a five-hitter to beat Loyola, 2-1. The junior right-hander is 7-3. . . . Tim Layana went the distance to win the second game Saturday, but that’s not news. The senior right-hander now has completed 10 of his 13 starts. In addition to his 12 victories, he has saved five games, and has 103 strikeouts in 124 innings. His ERA is a respectable 3.55.

Stanford had an opportunity to pad its lead in the Pacific 10 Southern Division when it played fifth-place USC while its two closest pursuers, UCLA and Arizona, were playing one another. But the suddenly resurgent Trojans spoiled the plan as they swept the three-game series. UCLA, meanwhile, won two of three from Arizona, including a 14-13 victory Sunday, moving into first place with a 15-9 record. Stanford and Arizona are tied for second at 14-10. . . . Stanford had won seven of its last eight games with USC. The sweep increased the Trojans’ winning streak to five. . . . UCLA trailed Arizona Sunday, 13-7, going into the bottom of the seventh inning, but the Bruins scored seven runs to take the lead. Bill Haselman capped the rally with a three-run homer.