Softball Team Glad to Be Home

Cal State Fullerton’s sports year is heading into the home stretch.

Will it end as successfully as last year, when the Fullerton baseball and softball teams advanced to their College World Series?

Being the only school in the nation to accomplish that last year was one thing, but what are the odds of it happening two years in a row, especially with both teams are going though some difficult times?

The softball team (39-26) will have the advantage of being an NCAA regional host for the first time since 1992.

The opposition, however, is formidable.

Fullerton, seeded third, will face defending national champion UCLA (41-8), seeded second, in the opening game of the double-elimination tournament at 4:30 p.m. Friday. And win or lose, two other strong teams, top-seeded Cal State Northridge (42-14) and Southwest Missouri (34-20), will be waiting.

The Titans have lost 11 of their last 16 games and finished fourth in the Big West. Last year, Fullerton went into the regional at Northridge having won 12 of its last 14, then won two one-run games from Northridge to reach the World Series in Oklahoma City.

Coach Judi Garman is optimistic. “I think we’re on the upswing now after winning our last two games, and our players are really excited about having a chance to play UCLA in the first round,” she said. “They’re a team that we’ve wanted to schedule, but they won’t play us. They’re not the same team they were last year. They have a lot of freshmen.”

The last time Fullerton played UCLA in the regional was in 1993, and the Bruins won two games at home, 1-0 and 2-1 in nine innings.

Garman is happy the Titans will be at home this time. “We seem to hit better at home than we do on the road,” she said. “We like the shorter fence, and I think we get more home runs at home.”

The Titans are 22-10 at home, 17-6 away.

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And then there’s the question of whether the slumping baseball team can regroup in time to make a run at a third consecutive trip to Omaha.

The Titans (42-12) have lost eight of their last 12 games, and their pitching was battered for 22 runs in two losses Saturday in the Big West Conference tournament.

The final three-game series of the regular season, beginning Thursday at Miami, is Fullerton’s last chance to get back on track before regional play starts next week.

It will be the first time since the season-opening series against Stanford that the Titans will be playing a team ranked higher in the national polls.

Miami is sixth, and Fullerton fell to 11th this week in Baseball America’s rankings.

In the preseason polls, Stanford was ranked first in one, and Fullerton in the other before each team won one game at Stanford’s Sunken Diamond. Stanford took the opener, 5-0, and Brent Billingsley came back to shut out the Cardinal, 7-0, in the second game. The third game was rained out, and never rescheduled.

Fullerton didn’t fall out of the top 10 in either poll until a week ago when it lost its fourth conference series of the season, the first time that has happened in the 21 years Fullerton has played Division I baseball.

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Despite all that has happened to the Titans recently, Long Beach State Coach Dave Snow believes Fullerton still could end up being one of the eight No. 1-seeded teams when regional pairings are announced Monday.

“The selection committee bases a lot on the power ratings,” Snow said. “I have no idea what Fullerton’s is, but I’d be surprised if they weren’t in the top six based on the strength of their schedule. I think they could still be a No. 1, possibly at Stanford. But I think they’d need a good showing this week.”

Stanford, which will host the only regional on the West Coast, also is regarded as borderline between being seeded first or second. Stanford has a 39-17 record, but has won 16 consecutive games.

The door also seems open for Fullerton to go to Stanford as a second-seeded team, if the selection committee regards Stanford as a No. 1. If the committee sends a team from outside the region there as No. 1, the Titans likely would go elsewhere. It’s doubtful either Stanford or Fullerton would drop lower than No. 2.

USC is a certain No. 1, but won’t be assigned to Stanford as a member of the same conference (Pacific 10). That same guideline makes it almost certain that Fullerton won’t be in the same regional with Long Beach State or Nevada Las Vegas.