UC IRVINE NOTEBOOK : Baseball Team’s Strong Start Gets the Boot

UC Irvine’s baseball season has taken a turn--a turn for the worse.

The Anteaters got off to a 22-11 start and were 23-13 going into last weekend’s three-game series at Fresno State, the first-place team in the Big West Conference.

Then, there went the record, like a throw from shortstop sailing over first. Or a dropped fly ball.

Irvine lost all three games, striking out 34 times and committing 14 errors, including eight in the Sunday’s loss.

That might be a school record, but nobody knows. No one has kept track.

“Looking back on the Fresno State series, our pitchers did a pretty good job,” Coach Mike Gerakos said. “But we collapsed on defense, and we didn’t swing the bat very well.”

The pitchers, in fact, lowered their earned-run average. Of the 15 runs Fresno State scored, only seven were earned.

The Anteaters were forced to play the final two games of the series without Al Rodriguez, a junior shortstop from Westminster High School who leads the team with a .380 average. A muscle strain in his upper back has kept Rodriguez out the past three games. His status is day-to-day. Jon Damush, his replacement, committed three of the team’s eight errors Sunday.

“We missed Al Rodriguez, but the people out there should be able to play catch,” Gerakos said.

Irvine tried to regroup Tuesday against U.S. International. The Anteaters lost, 12-6, and committed five errors.

“Whatever I tried, didn’t work,” said Gerakos, who believes he must have erred in preparing the team for it to fall so thoroughly apart. “We’re going to try to go back to basics, regroup and go forward from here. It’s a matter of the ballclub tightening its belt and going ahead. When we were playing well, we were doing the little things you need to do to be successful. Now we’re looking beyond those things. We’re looking at the product and forgetting about the process.”

Irvine, 1-5 in the Big West, plays host to the University of the Pacific in a three-game series at Anteater Field beginning at 7 tonight.

The men’s tennis team also has a losing streak after falling to Harvard, UCLA, Pepperdine and the University of San Diego.

Asterisks, please, Coach Greg Patton asks. Harvard is ranked ninth in the country, UCLA eighth, Pepperdine fourth and San Diego 19th.

Still, Patton is concerned. Irvine (14-10) is ranked 14th, but Patton said the Anteaters are only “on the cusp” of making the 20-team NCAA championships, a field they haven’t missed since 1986.

Irvine has four conference matches and the conference championships remaining before closing the schedule against UCLA and USC in early May.

“I think we need to beat USC or UCLA (to make the NCAAs),” Patton said.

Since losing Aaron Stolpman to a broken ankle, Irvine has had to rely heavily on its one-two punch of Trevor Kronemann and Richard Lubner.

Kronemann (25-9), who had been slowed by a hip flexor, is ranked 17th in the country. He beat seventh-ranked David Wells-Roth of Pepperdine, but had a 10-match winning streak broken in a loss to San Diego’s Jose Luis Noriega, who is ranked sixth.

Lubner (21-7), is ranked 38th and had won 11 matches in a row before losing to Pepperdine’s Alejo Mancisidor. During the season, he has beaten players ranked 15th, 19th, 20th and 24th.

The pressure is on the younger players who have had to step in, among them Neel Grover and Randy Ivey.

“My young guys are getting lot of playing time, a lot of experience,” Patton said. “In the long run, that will serve us well down the line. I’m just trying to keep their confidence up. Whatever happens this year, happens. It’s like putting in time in the weight room. You break down your muscles, and then next year you’re bigger and stronger.”

Two freshman--Desiree Bracey and Shelly Tochluk--helped the women’s 4 x 400-meter relay team set a school record with a time of 3:46.67 at the Fresno Relays Saturday. Sophomore Veronica Escoffery and junior Sjondrala Vaughn were the other members of the team that broke the record of 3:49.05, set in 1987.

Both the men and women compete in the UNLV Invitational at Myron Partridge Stadium on the Nevada Las Vegas campus Saturday. UNLV will be the site of the Big West Championships May 11-12.

Anteater Notes

Buffy Rabbitt has beaten the provisional qualifying time in the 1,500 meters (4:27) and is likely to compete in the NCAA championships May 30--June 2 at Durham N.C. . . . Mike Morales, who already has qualified in the hammer throw, won that event Saturday at Fresno with a distance of 206-7. He has not lost this season. . . . The men’s volleyball team, ranked 13th, finishes its regular season on the road against 10th-ranked UC Santa Barbara Saturday. Irvine is 0-3 against the Gauchos this season.