Small Colleges : CCAA Baseball Race Is Stickier Than Ever for Cal Poly Pomona

The California Collegiate Athletic Assn. baseball race is off to its usual start, which is to say frantic and jumbled. The second-place team has fewer losses than the leader. The fourth-place team has fewer losses than No. 3.

Mix in the last-place team beating the leaders and lots of extra innings and you get an idea of a typical CCAA baseball season.

Coach John Scolinos of Cal Poly Pomona, the winningest active coach in the nation, has seen it all before. He likens the league to a candy store.

“I look for a rock-candy group--they’re not gonna crumble under pressure,” the 40-year veteran said. “Some guys crumble. That’s a jelly bean--they look hard on the outside but when things get hot they melt on the inside.”

There are also marshmallows, but Scolinos won’t even go into that.

“We don’t have any,” he said. “We’re trying to get our guys from jelly bean to hard rock. If we do that, the winning will take care of itself.”

The Broncos’ coach, whose teams have won 1,089 games and three national Division II titles, puts his players through a challenging early season to toughen them up. This season, his team’s nonleague schedule was made up entirely of Division I teams, so the Broncos’ 23-19 record is deceptive.

To get his team ready for the rigors of the road he has played a series at Arizona State and spent nine days in March at the Hawaii Rainbow tournament. The team, then in first place in the CCAA, returned home and lost to last-place Cal State Los Angeles.

“You figure it out,” Scolinos said. “This game can drive you to drink.”

Pomona is in second place in the CCAA at 9-4, a game behind Cal State Dominguez Hills (12-5) but a game up in the loss column. The Broncos will begin a key series of six road games today with a game at 2:30 p.m. at third-place Cal State Northridge (9-6). There is also a doubleheader Saturday at UC Riverside and a two-game series next week at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

Meanwhile, Dominguez Hills has a light conference schedule, playing at home Friday against Riverside and at fourth-place Chapman (7-5) next Tuesday.

“It’s the usual--a dogfight,” Scolinos said. “We’re all right in there. I figure you could lose nine (games in a 30-game schedule) and you’ve still got a chance. The last two years went down to the final weekend. This will go right down to the wire. Here, a ballclub in last place don’t mean anything.”

Scolinos said, however, that the next two weeks would be crucial for his club, though he’s not worried about playing on the road. “We’ve been playing better on the road than at home,” he said. “You figure it out.”

With a schedule that often has teams playing five conference games in a week, pitching is the key in the CCAA. Scolinos has gotten remarkable performances from his top starters, with Charlie Webb, Tom Gorman and Rene Isenhart producing 20 complete games. Webb, a senior left-hander, has 10 of them with a 7-3 record and a CCAA-leading 2.45 earned-run average. He’s 4-0 in CCAA games. In 88 innings, Webb has allowed only one home run.

Gorman, who has seven complete games, has faltered a bit in conference play with a 2-2 mark.

“Everybody’s got one or two good pitchers,” Scolinos said. “After that, what you’ve got is gonna make the difference, your 3, 4 and 5 (pitchers). Whoever they come through for is gonna win. Pitching depth is the main factor.”

Scolinos likes the complete games. “When you got a guy that’s got it, I’ll go along with him,” he said. “Is the guy in the bullpen as good (as) or better than what you’ve got going? I got Charlie Webb--I’ll go with him. There’s nobody better.”

The Broncos are a respectable hitting team at .275. They have power in first baseman Tom Weeks, who has 8 homers and 44 runs batted in, and outfielder Keith Barrett, who also has 8 home runs. But most of the teams in the CCAA can hit.

“There are no pussy-willow hitters in the league. That’s why you’ve got to have the pitching,” Scolinos said.

Last weekend, Pomona won an extra-inning game against Northridge, and Dominguez Hills played its fourth extra-inning game in CCAA play. It’s a tough league.

“I call it mental toughness,” Scolinos said. “You can be mentally tough and get beat, but you gave it your best.”

Small-College Notes

In a battle for first place in SCIAC men’s tennis, 10th-ranked Claremont-Mudd edged No. 6 Redlands, 5-4. The pivotal match was fifth singles, where Claremont’s Matt Gleason fought off two match points to beat John Kranz in a third-set tiebreaker. The teams will meet again April 28 in a match that should have bearing on the Division III ratings. . . . Cal State Bakersfield’s Ron Lee, the nation’s premier Division II high jumper, cleared 7-3 1/2 at Fresno State. . . . Cal State Los Angeles sophomore Sylvia Mosqueda set another school record, this time at 5,000 meters, running 16:04.26 at Arizona State. She knocked 49 seconds off the Cal State L.A. record. . . . Mike Gaines of Biola set a school record in the 400 intermediate hurdles, 53.21. . . . Claremont-Mudd’s Corey Ahart has stolen 15 bases without a miss. . . . Chapman’s Bryan Beals has stolen 27 in 31 attempts. . . . Biola’s Carl Johnson and Paul Spiegel hit home runs on consecutive pitches against Pomona-Pitzer.