CAL STATE FULLERTON NOTES : Gonzaga Joins Field for Baseball Event

Gonzaga agreed Thursday to become the fourth team in Cal State Fullerton’s Titan Baseball Classic, which will be played Feb. 26-28 at Titan Field.

Gonzaga, led by former UC Irvine Coach Steve Hertz, will join Florida State, Chapman and Fullerton. The school will replace Waseda, a university team from Japan that was forced to withdraw recently when its coach died.

“Gonzaga has been in the upper echelon of the (Pacific 10 North) all the time,” Titan Coach Augie Garrido said. “Steve is an outstanding coach. They have quality athletes and they run a quality program.”

Gonzaga, located in Spokane, Wash., finished 22-30 in 1992 and was fourth in the Pac-10 North at 14-16.

“We’ve got a good club,” said Hertz, who was the Irvine coach in 1979 and ’80. “I just hope we get outside before we come down there. We’ve got three feet of snow right now.”

A television deal with KDOC in Anaheim will make the Titan men’s basketball team prime-time players for a four-game stretch beginning next month.

The university and KDOC Channel 56 have worked out a deal in which Fullerton’s home games against UC Irvine (Feb. 13), Cal State Long Beach (Feb. 18), UC Santa Barbara (Feb. 20) and Nevada Las Vegas (March 6) will be televised live, beginning at 8:30 p.m. Tip-off time for each of those games has been moved back one hour to accommodate the television station.

Ross Porter, a member of the Dodgers’ broadcast crew, will call play-by-play for each game and will be joined by former UNLV assistant coach Denny Hovanec.