College Baseball : Southland Teams Await Word on Rest of Regional Berths

With the exception of Pepperdine, which won the West Coast Athletic Conference title and earned an automatic berth in the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. tournament, it’s a waiting game for Southern California baseball teams.

The NCAA announced the first eight at-large teams this week, as well as all eight regional sites, but no Southern California team was among those named. Fifteen teams have already earned automatic berths as conference champions.

Among those joining Pepperdine in that category are Fresno State and Arizona State. In all, 27 conference champions earn automatic berths, with the remaining 21 teams selected by a committee. The entire 48-team field, and each team’s regional destination, will be announced next Monday.

Fresno State, the Pacific Coast Athletic Conference champion, will play host to the West I Regional, and Arizona State, the Pacific 10 Southern Division champion, will play host to the West II Regional. Defending national champion Stanford, the Pac-10 Southern Division runner-up, is the only California team, so far, to have received an at-large bid.

The NCAA will complete the selections after conference tournaments this weekend.

Loyola Marymount of the WCAC and Cal State Fullerton of the PCAA seemingly have locks on at-large bids. Both were ranked high nationally all season, although each faltered to a third-place finish in its respective conference.

Nevada Las Vegas, which finished second in the PCAA, is also expected to get a bid, as may California, the third-place finisher in the Pac-10 Southern Division. WCAC runner-up Santa Clara is also a strong candidate.

On a shaky fence is USC, which appeared to be regional-bound until it lost seven of its last eight games, including a 3-game sweep by Stanford last weekend. USC finished fourth in the Pac-10.

San Diego State’s overall record of 42-16 should be good for a bid. The Aztecs have won the Western Athletic Conference regular-season title, but have to win the WAC tournament as well to clinch the automatic berth. Hawaii and Brigham Young are candidates for at-large bids.

The eight 6-team regionals will begin next Wednesday at some sites, next Thursday at others.

In case you missed it, Pepperdine clinched the WCAC championship May 7 by beating Loyola, which led the conference until the last two weeks of the season. Then, in another late-season twist, Santa Clara emerged to take second place and Loyola finished third.

It was all a surprise to some faithful college baseball followers, but it was a disappointment to Loyola Coach Dave Snow.

“It was a bit of a slump that came at the wrong time,” Snow said. “We lost four games in a row--one to Reno and three of four to Santa Clara, who played well. They had one of their best series and we had a down series. I think Santa Clara is the most underrated team on the West Coast. They have good pitching and overall good play.

“Everyone was saying Loyola is rolling. But they weren’t noticing that Santa Clara and Pepperdine weren’t losing either. In our conference, it seemed to all come down to how we did against those two teams. A couple of series and we slipped.”

The last two weeks of the season, Loyola took a 12-0 conference record into a 4-game series at Reno. At the time, Pepperdine was in second place with a 13-2-1 record. Loyola won the first three games, outscoring Reno, 53-17. The Lions lost the fourth game, then made the trip to Santa Clara and lost three more.

The finale came down to a 4-game series between Pepperdine and the Lions at Loyola. Loyola had to win three games. Pepperdine needed only two. The Waves got them in the first two games.

“A lot of people kind of wrote off Pepperdine early, but I thought they might be the kind of team that would come on strong at the end because of the new position players they have,” Snow said. “It’s the kind of team that takes a while to get going, but gets better as the season goes on. They have sound defense and good pitching and are a solid ballclub.”

This is Pepperdine’s fourth straight conference title and its 12th trip to the NCAA playoffs. The last time Pepperdine advanced to the College World Series was in 1979, when it finished third.

Pepperdine, which lost five position players and three pitchers to the draft, spent a miserable first half trying to pull the team together.

Then in mid-March, after struggling to a 11-13 overall record, the Waves won their first conference series of the season from Santa Clara, then went on to sweep a 4-game series from UC San Diego, which Coach Dave Gorrie said was the turning point of the season.

“We won three of those games in the last inning of each game, coming from behind each time,” Gorrie said.

College Notes

The six other regional sites: Northeast, at New Britain, Conn., a neutral site; East, at Tallahassee, Fla., Florida State playing host; Atlantic, at Coral Gables, Fla., Miami playing host; South, at Mississippi State, Miss., Mississippi State playing host; Central, at Austin, Tex., Texas playing host; Midwest, at Stillwater, Okla., Oklahoma State playing host. . . . Cal State Fullerton’s Brent Mayne ended the regular season with a .408 batting average and a 35-game hitting streak. . . . USC junior third baseman Rodney Peete hit safely in 24 of 25 conference games and three times hit two home runs in a game. He finished with a .336 batting average, 11 home runs and 39 runs batted in. . . . UCLA had two players named to the Pac-10 Southern Division team, senior pitcher Mike Magnante and junior first baseman Eric Karros. Magnante finished the season with a 14-4 record, 3.93 earned-run average and 101 strikeouts in 137.1 innings. Karros finished with a .415 average, 17 home runs, 54 RBIs and a school-record 100 hits. . . . Three USC players made the Pac-10 team: junior catcher Jim Campanis, who hit .382 with 79 RBIs and 17 home runs; junior shortstop Bret Barberie, .380, 42 RBIs and 10 homers, and Peete.