SportsScope : Waves, Ranked No. 6 After Sweeping Loyola, Face Gonzaga

The Pepperdine baseball team, ranked sixth nationally after last week’s three-game sweep of Loyola Marymount, will play host to Gonzaga in a three-game non-conference series this weekend.

The Waves, 16-5-2 overall and 5-1 in the West Coast Athletic Conference, will play Gonzaga in a single game at 2:30 p.m. Friday and a double-header at noon Saturday at Eddy D. Field Stadium in Malibu.

Pepperdine, which has won four games in a row and 11 of its last 15, will play a non-conference game at USC at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Coach Dave Gorrie’s Waves have been hot despite a rash of injuries. Top pitcher Tony Lewis, who underwent surgery for multiple fractures in his cheekbone, is expected to begin physical conditioning this week. Pitcher Pat Dubar, who had a hernia operation, is due back this week. First baseman Scott Shockey is back in the lineup after knee surgery. Catcher Peter Kuld has a broken thumb and is expected to miss some games.

The No. 1 UCLA men’s volleyball team, which defeated No. 2 Pepperdine in late February to take sole possession of first place in the Western Intercollegiate Volleyball Assn., travels to Malibu for a rematch with the Waves at 7:30 tonight.

At the start of the week, the Bruins were 25-3 overall and 9-0 in the WIVA, while Pepperdine was 11-4 and 6-1.

The last time the teams met, UCLA lost the first game but came from behind in the next three in a match that lasted nearly three hours. Pepperdine’s Troy Tanner led all hitters with 32 kills, and UCLA’s Ozzie Volstad paced the Bruins with 29 kills. Wave Matt Rigg had 28 kills.

UCLA has won 14 straight matches and 22 of its last 24. The Waves lost three in a row in February before rebounding with three-game sweeps of Cal State Long Beach, the University of Manitoba and Stanford.

The No. 3 UCLA women’s tennis team, 14-0 at the start of the week, will play host to No. 3 USC (6-4) at 1 p.m. Saturday at the campus Los Angeles Tennis Center.

The No. 3 Bruin men (12-3) will meet No. 1 USC (14-0) at 1 p.m. Saturday at USC’s Marks Stadium.

Glenn Bassett, UCLA men’s coach, said that although the Trojans are favored to win, the Bruins could surprise “if we play our best and our fans travel some 15 miles to support us.”

USC defeated the Bruins, 5-2, in February in the semifinals of the National Indoor Team Championships and went on to take the title with a 5-4 victory over Clemson.

Last week UCLA swept the singles and doubles titles at the Southern California Intercollegiate Championships in Pasadena.

Otis Smith, who has been playing No. 5 singles for the Bruins, won the singles at Pasadena, defeating USC’s Scott Melville in a semifinal match and Trojan Jonas Wallgard in the final. USC aces Rick Leach and Luke Jensen didn’t compete at Pasadena but they will play against UCLA on Saturday.

In the doubles final at the intercollegiates, UCLA’s Patrick Galbraith and Brian Garrow defeated teammates Buff Farrow and Brett Greenwood, 4-6, 7-6, 6-4.

The No. 1 UCLA men’s gymnastics team (21-2) will be in action this weekend, but the No. 1 Bruin women (15-0) will be idle.

The men, who lead the nation in scoring with an average of 281.23 points a meet, will play host to No. 2 Cal State Fullerton, which is second in scoring with a 280.43, at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at John Wooden Center.

In January, the Bruin men defeated Fullerton, 280.90 to 278.90. UCLA’s Tony Pineda and Curtis Holdsworth are one-two nationally in the all-around, Pineda with an average of 56.97 and Holdsworth at 56.87. Xiao Ping Li of the Titans is the country’s best in the pommel horse at 9.87, while Pineda is second at 9.82.

Last week UCLA’s Tanya Service won the all-around with a 36.75 to lead her team to a triangular win over Cal State Northridge and Northern Colorado.

In track, the UCLA men and women will play hosts to Cal State Long Beach, Azusa Pacific and Cal State Northridge in quadrangulars Saturday at Drake Stadium. The women’s meet will start at 11 a.m., the men’s at 1.

Last week the Bruin men won their 21st straight dual meet under Coach Bob Larsen, defeating Arizona, 102-55, in a Pacific 10 Conference meet at UCLA.

Junior Kevin Young won three events, taking the long jump with a 23-8, the 110-meter high hurdles in 14.29 and the 400 intermediate hurdles in 51.06. Double winners for UCLA were senior Jim Connolly in the javelin (234-8) and the high jump (6-8 3/4), senior Jim Banich in the shot put (59-10) and the discus (179-6) and sophomore Henry Thomas in the 100 (10.3) and 200 (20.78).

In other UCLA women’s sports, the golfers will compete in the Betsy Rawls Invitational from Friday through Sunday at Austin, Tex., while the softball team, which ran its record to 14-0 with wins last week against Colorado State, Nevada Reno and Nevada Las Vegas, will play host to Utah State at 1 p.m. March 23.