Roaring Finish : Loyola’s baseball team got off to a rough start under new coach Chris Smith, but the hot-hitting Lions challenged for the WCAC title and threatened in the regionals.

It was well past midnight on a warm Memorial Day in Tucson when the clock ran out on the Loyola Marymount baseball team.

Loyola’s 13-4 loss to Arizona in the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. West I Regional ended a successful season for the Lions under Chris Smith, who became the coach last June when Dave Snow left after four years to take over the baseball program at Cal State Long Beach.

Loyola finished 39-24 and ranked 18th in this week’s Collegiate Baseball-ESPN poll. The Lions, who posted an 18-5 record in the West Coast Athletic Conference and in second place behind Pepperdine, gained an at-large bid into the regionals for the third time in four years.

“It’s been a rough year at times,” Smith said. “That we ended up in a regional and played pretty well, I think that speaks for itself.”

Loyola batted .313, led by junior catcher Miah Bradbury who hit .398 with six home runs and 46 runs batted in. Bradbury had a school-record 31 doubles and compiled a 21-game hitting streak during which he went 38 for 76 (.500).

Seniors Rick Allen and Travis Tarchione closed out their careers impressively. Third-baseman Allen batted .322 and produced team highs in home runs (11), RBIs (60) and stolen bases (22). Tarchione, an outfielder, hit .355 with eight home runs and 55 RBIs.

The Lions saw hope for the future in Joe Ciccarella, a freshman from Mater Dei High School, who batted .316 with two homers and 37 RBIs and was voted WCAC Freshman of the Year.

Senior right-hander Kalani Bush anchored Loyola’s pitching staff, which compiled a 4.21 earned-run average. Bush, a middle reliever with five career victories in his first three seasons, was 10-2 with a 3.67 ERA this season as a starter.

Brian Clancy, a senior right-hander, made a team-high 35 appearances, all in relief, to compile a 6-4 record and a team-low 2.33 ERA.

The Lions, however, sorely missed Bobby DeJardin and Carl Fraticelli, who gave Loyola one of the strongest middle infield combinations in the country last season.

DeJardin and Fraticelli, who signed professional contracts, committed only 16 errors in 1988. This season, sophomore shortstop Darrel Deak and junior second basemen Kevin Van De Brake and Joe Bellezzo committed 54.

During the first half of the season, the Lions often stumbled under their new coach. In 1986 Snow had led Loyola to a No. 1 ranking and the College World Series.

Smith, 30, played for Snow at Los Angeles Valley College and coached with him at Cal State Fullerton and Loyola. Although Smith’s philosophies are similar to Snow’s, Loyola players seemed to have trouble adapting to a coaching style not quite as intense.

On Jan. 28, the day that the Loyola basketball team defeated U.S. International University, 181-150, in the highest scoring college basketball game in history, the Loyola baseball team scored a season-opening 20-12 victory over USIU.

The Lions then lost seven consecutive games to two-time defending national champion Stanford, USC, Cal State Long Beach and California before defeating California on April 19.

“The rough start made it an awfully difficult season,” Smith said. “Because of the success the past few years, there are expectations at Loyola. When you get off to the kind of start we did, there’s pressure.”

Loyola snapped Long Beach’s season-opening 18-game win streak with a 4-1 victory, but Loyola was still struggling with a 10-13 record when the Lions met the University of San Francisco in their West Coast Athletic Conference opener March 17.

“At the beginning, I wasn’t thinking too much about winning the conference. I was more concerned that we start playing decent,” Smith said.

Loyola took three out of four from USF before taking a three-week break from conference play. The Lions went 5-3 during the interim and swept consecutive four-game series from the University of San Diego and St. Mary’s when WCAC play resumed.

They were 17-2 entering the final WCAC series at Pepperdine but lost three out of four and finished second.

Loyola’s at-large bid put it in a regional that included powerful Arizona and Oklahoma, Long Beach, Hawaii and Eastern Kentucky.

“Anything can happen,” Smith said Friday before his opening game against Oklahoma.

Only bad things occurred during the eighth inning against the Sooners. Loyola squandered a 2-0 lead and committed three of its six errors, which allowed Oklahoma to score all of its runs en route to a 5-2 victory.

“We can’t worry about what happened today,” Bradbury said. “We just can’t let it happen again.”

Loyola was hoping to duplicate the feat of 1986 when the Lions lost to UC Santa Barbara in its regional opener but came back to win the regional and advance to the World Series.

The Lions took a step toward that goal on Saturday, defeating Eastern Kentucky, 9-3, behind Deak’s three-run homer and a strong five-inning performance by Clancy.

On Sunday, Loyola avenged its defeat to Oklahoma by posting a come-from-behind 6-5 victory in 11 innings.

“There was something weird going on in the dugout,” Clancy said. “It was the same kind of feeling that we had in ’86. The feeling that you just know you’re going to win no matter what the situation.”

Brian Walker, a freshman from Mission Viejo who had one hit in 12 at-bats during the season, drove in the game-winning run with a single, scoring Deak from third.

“It was the best feeling in the whole world,” Walker said. “As soon as I hit it, I just jumped up. I was pumped.”

The Lions, however, were drained when they returned to Sancet Field on Sunday for their game against Arizona that would determine unbeaten Long Beach’s opponent in the final. Having played their first three games at noon in 100 degrees, several of the Loyola players were dehydrated, feverish and coughing up blood.

With All-American candidate Scott Erickson on the mound, Arizona forged to an 8-0 lead after four innings. Loyola managed one run in the fourth and three in the fifth but the game and season were over.

“I think we gave it a good shot here,” Smith said after the loss. “The game against Oklahoma was the best game we’ve played in all year.

“It’s too bad the season has to end, but our performance here is a great way to go into next season.”