Loyola Has Title Despite the Clouds
El Nino has been blamed for everything from lousy golf scores to your kid’s not getting his homework in on time, so why not the West Coast Conference championship?
The title was clinched by Loyola Marymount with a 5-3 victory at Portland on Monday, the win giving the Lions a 20-8 league record.
Second-place Pepperdine is 20-9.
If the arithmetic looks a bit skewed, it is. The inequity is because Loyola’s three-game series at St. Mary’s, April 7-8, was rained out--that’s the El Nino part--and only two games could be made up because of various league bylaws. The Lions won both makeup games.
“Understand, this is not sour grapes,” said Pepperdine Coach Frank Sanchez, who met with his players Monday to try to sort things out. “We understand the situation and we could see it coming, but it would have been nice to settle it on the field.”
One of the reasons it couldn’t be was a misguided attempt by the WCC to even competition by putting Loyola and Pepperdine in different divisions, though the schools are a short bus ride apart. As a result, Loyola played two series against Santa Clara and Portland and had two scheduled against St. Mary’s, but only one against rival Pepperdine.
The Waves won two of those three games to own the tiebreaker--which wasn’t needed.
The two division champions do not meet in a league playoff in the WCC, another lack of prescience.
All of this means that Loyola gets the conference’s NCAA bid, and Pepperdine will probably stay home with a 32-22 record, itself having lost two games of its 56-game schedule to El Nino.
Give Portland some of the credit. Loyola split a doubleheader there Sunday in games in which outfielders should have worn spiked waders.
And Loyola won Monday’s game in front of a hostile crowd that included Pepperdine’s Josh Oder, Mike Kramer and Dan Bir, who blew off Sanchez’s meeting in Malibu, hopped a plane to Oregon and became instant Portland fans.
STILL ALIVE
Among several things to be settled this weekend is the fate of the longest-running NCAA tournament streak in Southern California.
Long Beach State has made the playoffs seven years in a row, but at 33-20, the 49ers are a bubble team that can help itself with a strong performance in the Big West tournament, which begins today.
Fullerton (42-13, 25-5), the regular-season champion, plays host to the event, which has never been won by the host team. The Titans should get an NCAA bid for the seventh year in a row.
Long Beach, a streaky team that finished the regular season with seven consecutive victories, gets one home game--tonight against Cal State Sacramento--before adjourning things to Fullerton. Two tournament victories would probably extend the 49ers’ NCAA streak.
“We’ll go as far as our bats take us,” Long Beach Coach Dave Snow said. “I think we’re a lot better off [with pitching] than we were a month ago. I’ve got some guys I can throw out there, but we’re not going to suddenly start throwing out a lot of zeros. If we’re going to do it, we’re going to do it with our bats.”
WHY BOTHER
Stanford (41-10-1) clinched the Pacific 10 Southern Division championship, and the Cardinal plays a best-of-three series at Seattle against Northern champion Washington (37-15) to determine the league title.
Both teams will earn NCAA bids. Stanford, which has been No. 1 all season, will play host to the only NCAA regional west of the Central time zone. Other Pac-10 teams expected to get bids are Arizona State (34-21), USC (39-14) and Oregon State (35-14-1).
FOUND AND LOST
San Jose State was at Hawaii for a weekend series, with a berth in the Western Athletic Conference tournament at stake. The Spartans lost the first two games, then won on Sunday, which was the problem.
The WAC is divided into three divisions, and its tournament includes the three champions, plus three at-large teams, and at Sunday’s end, San Jose, having knocked out Hawaii, found itself tied with New Mexico for the final berth.
To settle things, the Spartans could make up a game in Albuquerque that had previously been rained out. So they flew three time zones back to San Francisco, spent four hours in the airport, boarded a plane for another time-zone trip to Albuquerque, arriving at 1 p.m. Monday for a 3:15 game, which they lost, 15-14, using seven tired pitchers.
NO MAGIC
Cal State Northridge finished with Southern California’s second-best record among Division I schools, the Matadors coming in at 37-19 after winning 25 of their last 27 games.
But 10 of Northridge’s victories came against non-Division I schools, which means that the NCAA selection committee probably will pass over the Matadors for the tournament because of its strength-of-schedule criterion.
It didn’t have to be. Northridge had its usual strong Division I schedule mapped out until school officials dropped the program last spring, and when it was picked back up late in the summer, other teams had made plans and games were hard to get.
BUNTS
UCLA (24-33) finished with its worst record since going 22-36 in 1994, but the Bruins showed the future is bright with shortstop Chase Utley setting a freshman home run record with 15 and freshman third baseman Garrett Atkins hitting in 33 consecutive games. . . . Northridge left-hander Jose Vasquez won his last seven starts to finish 10-5, with a 3.84 earned-run average. . . . Long Beach State’s Paul Day has 96 hits this season, six from the school record with the Big West tournament to play. He batted .474, with three homers and 15 RBIs in four games last week. . . . Pepperdine freshman catcher Dane Sardinha is on the U.S. National team roster. He batted .263, with 13 homers and 38 RBIs this season. . . . Long Beach State leadoff batter Terrmel Sledge, who transferred from Northridge, had a .722 week in which he was 13 for 18, scored 11 runs and drove in five. His season batting average is .382.