COLLEGE BASEBALL : Loyola Marymount’s Ciccarella Raised His Stock in Summer

Joe Ciccarella spent last summer touring the world with the U.S. national team.

He drove in a team-high 34 runs in 34 games in Canada, Japan and Cuba and returned for his junior season at Loyola Marymount intent on achieving something special.

“I became a lot more confident because of that international experience,” said Ciccarella, a first baseman who graduated from Santa Ana Mater Dei and was selected in the fourth round of the 1988 draft by the Philadelphia Phillies. “I’ve learned to work the count rather than swinging at the first pitch in the strike zone. Now, I try and get my pitch and see what I can do from there.”

With nine games left in the regular season, Ciccarella is on the verge of becoming the first player in the history of the West Coast Conference to win the triple crown. He leads the WCC with a .439 average, 12 home runs and 55 runs batted in in 51 games.

“There’s not much that Joe can’t do,” USC Coach Mike Gillespie said. “Everyone knew he was good coming out of high school, but I think he’s exceeded a lot of people’s expectations.”

Lately, Ciccarella has been raising eyebrows with his arm as well as his bat. Pitching for the first time in his collegiate career, he has displayed a near-90-m.p.h. fastball in nine innings of relief for the Lions (32-19 overall and 21-9 in the conference) who are second in the WCC behind fourth-ranked Pepperdine (35-8-1, 20-5).

“A couple of scouts have said they don’t know what to turn me in as, a postion player or a pitcher,” Ciccarella said. “I’m just trying to make myself as valuable as possible.”

Out of the shadows: Brett Jenkins has toiled in relative obscurity during his USC career while marquee players such as Bret Boone and Mark Smith got most of the attention from scouts and the media.

Jenkins, however, is having an outstanding season for the top-ranked Trojans, who last weekend clinched their first Pacific 10 Southern Division championship since the conference adopted its current alignment in 1979.

Jenkins, a 6-0, 190-pound junior from Rancho Cordova, batted .345 in 1989 and .294 last season after missing three weeks with a broken wrist.

This season, the USC coaching staff moved Jenkins from third base to second to strengthen the Trojans’ infield, and Jenkins has responded by batting .378 with nine home runs and 49 runs batted in. Jenkins also leads the Pac-10 with 23 doubles, one short of the USC single-season record set by Rich Dauer in 1974.

“I never worried about the (lack of) attention because I always told myself that, in the end, everything would work out fine,” said Jenkins, who batted .344 with wooden bats last summer in the Cape Cod League. “I knew I was going to have a good year and that this team was going to do well.”

Jenkins played on USC teams that were eliminated from the NCAA tournament in the final round of regionals at Austin, Tex., and Baton Rouge, La.

Having won the division title, the Trojans are hoping to play host to a regional for the first time since 1978, the year of their last national title.

“A lot of us have been to two regionals now,” Jenkins said. “We know what it takes to get to Omaha.”

Down to the wire: There are two weeks left in the Big West Conference schedule, but the championship could very well be determined this weekend when No. 15 Fresno State visits No. 5 Cal State Long Beach for a three-game series beginning Friday.

Fresno State (13-2) is atop the standings, while Long Beach (10-5) is tied for second with Cal State Fullerton, which swept Long Beach last weekend.

Long Beach, therefore, is looking to sweep Fresno State. To do that, the 49ers are going to have to beat right-hander Bobby Jones, who has been outstanding this season.

Jones, a 6-foot-4, 210-pound junior, is 11-1 with a 1.30 earned-run average. He has pitched 10 consecutive complete games and has put together scoreless streaks of 29 and 28 1/3 innings.

Jones has allowed only 64 hits in 118 innings and has 119 strikeouts. He is 5-0 with a 0.40 ERA in conference games.

Long Beach is at Pacific (5-10) next week, and Fresno State plays host to UC Santa Barbara (6-9).

Fullerton is at Santa Barbara this weekend. The Titans play host to San Jose State (5-10) in the conference finale.

College Baseball Notes

The city of Los Angeles’ Recreation and Parks Commission last week unanimously approved the renaming of the Crystal Springs baseball field in Griffith Park after Phil Pote, former baseball coach at Los Angeles City College who has been helping youths--particularly minorities--for 37 years. Pote is a part-time scout for the Seattle Mariners who began his coaching career at Fremont High in 1953. He also coached at Locke High and LACC, and worked as a full-time scout for the Oakland Athletics. Over the years, Pote has given countless youngsters from the inner city the opportunity to participate in baseball and encouragement to continue their educations.

Jerrold Rountree of UC Santa Barbara has stolen 45 bases this season and, with 185 in his career, is three short of tying Lance Blankenship for second place on the NCAA’s all-time list. Phil Stephenson, who played at Wichita State, holds the record of 206. . . . Joel Wolfe of UCLA leads the Pacific 10 Southern Division with 32 stolen bases, eight shy of the Bruins’ single-season record of 38 set by Dave Penniall in 1976. . . . Alan Burke of Cal State Long Beach has raised his batting average 60 points in the last four weeks. The senior utility man is batting .360 with 36 runs batted in.

Bryant Winslow of UC Irvine has 10 home runs, eclipsing the school’s single-season record of nine that was shared by five others. Pepperdine second baseman Steve Rodriguez, a sophomore who has been invited to try out for Team USA this summer, is batting .432 and has stolen 23 bases, both team highs. . . . Cal State Northridge right-hander Craig Clayton is 10-3 with a 1.57 ERA for the No. 16 Matadors. Scott Sharts has 21 homers for Northridge. . . . Mark Smith stole two bases last weekend against California and became USC’s all-time leader with 55. Smith broke the record of 54 held by John Jackson.