Knock-Offs Cost Southland a Lot in NCAA Representation

Coaches at USC, Cal State Fullerton, Loyola Marymount and Long Beach State spent much of Monday making travel arrangements to hard-to-get-to places and in remembering NCAA baseball tournaments past. . . .

In lunch with ESPN, watching their schools’ names and postseason destinations announced. . . .

In practice and in research into the programs at Fordham, Harvard, Stanford and North Carolina State. . . .

In finding a good restaurant in Clemson, S.C., or Baton Rouge, La., or anyplace in the Bay Area. . . .

And in setting pitching plans.

Coaches at UCLA, Pepperdine, UC Santa Barbara and Cal State Northridge spent much of Monday trying to recruit players so that a year from now, they can have the problems their Southern California brethren are facing this year.

If success in local college baseball is measured in NCAA tournament numbers, it’s a down year.

“Usually there are more teams in Southern California that are contenders for regionals,” said Coach Gary Adams, whose UCLA team last season played in the College World Series. On Monday, he was in his office, pointedly not watching ESPN. Why bother?

“Last year, we had Stanford and UCLA in the World Series, and we had Arizona State and SC come within a game of being there,” said Adams, reeling off Pacific 10 schools that joined the usual Southern California teams in postseason play.

“This year, I think we all did a kind of a good job of knocking each other off.”

Tuesdays and Wednesdays have been neighborhood knock-off days, when you play a nonconference game, often against a ranked team in your own area.

“I think the key games have been the midweek days for [damaging records of local teams], even more than the weekends,” USC Coach Mike Gillespie said. “When a Long Beach is banging heads with a UCLA, or a USC or a Loyola or a Pepperdine, it’s difficult. It’s one of the reasons that you don’t see the glittering records here that you see in places like Wichita State [which is 55-5] or Miami [ranked No. 1 with a 46-9 record].”

Reverse the five nonconference losses to USC, Long Beach and UCLA, and Pepperdine would have reached postseason play. Instead, Coach Frank Sanchez was out recruiting.

Gillespie criticized the NCAA selection committee for again slighting the West when it was time to choose regional sites. Only the Palo Alto regional is west of the Central time zone, and Southern California, for all of its postseason entries, hasn’t had a regional since USC hosted in 1991.

“And certainly, I was disappointed that they chose only eight teams from the West and only four from the Pac-10, while the Southeastern Conference got seven teams,” Gillespie said. “I think last year we had 11 from the West, and this year you could make a case for Oregon State being in there from the Pac-10.”

Stanford and USC were both top-seeded, Stanford at home and USC at Clemson, which was seeded second after losing seven of its last nine games and being knocked out of the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament in two games for the first time in 25 years.

The Trojans open against Fordham of the Atlantic 10 on Thursday.

Winners of the eight double-elimination regionals advance to the College World Series at Omaha, beginning May 29.

Fullerton’s case for top-seeded status in one of the regions died in the Big West tournament at Titan Stadium.

“If we had won, we thought we might get a top seed someplace, maybe at Texas A&M;,” Titan Coach George Horton said. Instead, Rice is top-seeded at College Station, because Fullerton was knocked out of the Big West tournament by Long Beach.

The Titans became second-seeded in the South II regional at Baton Rouge, La., and will play Harvard on Thursday. The problem there is the host team, top-seeded Louisiana State, is seeking its third consecutive College World Series championship.

“We’re two for two out of there,” Horton said. “In ‘92, we played for the national championship after winning at Baton Rouge, and in ‘95, we won the national championship out of there.”

Long Beach State Coach Dave Snow spent his day wondering if playing in the West regional at Palo Alto was a reward or punishment for winning the Big West’s automatic bid.

He had relished the idea of taking Long Beach on the road, “because I’d rather not have to compete with a lot of schools from Southern California to get to Omaha. You wait and see how local teams make out in the regionals.”

Instead, it’s a Southern California convention at Palo Alto, where the 49ers open against North Carolina State and the road to Omaha winds through Stanford, the Pacific 10’s Southern Division regular-season champion and for 14 weeks, the nation’s No. 1 team.

Sixth-seeded Loyola Marymount will be there too, playing Stanford in the first round. The only certainty there is that Loyola, the West Coast Conference champion, will be pitching a freshman.

That’s because the Lions have a four-freshman rotation.

“I only know that they’ve been No. 1 all year long,” Lion Coach Frank Cruz said. “This is all as exciting as heck. These young guys want to play. They’re ready to play right now.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

NCAA Baseball Tournament

All Regionals start Thursday

EAST At Clemson, S.C.

USC: 40-15

Fordham: 27-18

Clemson: 42-14

Citadel: 36-22

Virginia Commonwealth: 44-13

South Alabama: 39-17

****

ATLANTIC I At Coral Gables, Fla.

Miami:46-9

Bowling Green: 34-19

South Carolina: 42-16

Florida International: 40-22

North Carolina: 39-21

Texas Tech: 43-18

****

ATLANTIC II At Tallahassee, Fla.

Florida State: 49-18

Liberty: 32-27

Auburn: 43-16

Rutgers: 32-14

Delaware: 43-8

Oklahoma: 40-18

****

SOUTH I At Gainesville, Fla.

Florida: 42-15

Monmouth, N.J.: 30-19

Wake Forest: 41-21

Illinois: 39-19

Baylor: 40-18-1

Richmond: 40-15-1

****

SOUTH II At Baton Rouge, La.

LSU: 42-17

Nicholls State: 28-32

Cal State Fullerton: 44-15

Harvard: 34-10

Tulane: 47-13

SW Louisiana: 39-20

****

CENTRAL At College Station, Texas

Rice: 45-14

Oral Roberts: 44-18

Texas A&M;: 43-18

N.C. Charlotte: 43-17

Washington: 39-15

Mississippi State: 37-20

****

MIDWEST At Wichita, Kan.

Wichita State: 55-5

SE Missouri State: 32-22

Georgia Tech: 38-20

Oklahoma State: 38-19

Arizona State: 34-21

Arkansas: 37-19

****

WEST At Palo Alto

Stanford: 41-12-1

Loyola Marymount: 33-21-1

Alabama: 43-16

Minnesota: 45-13

Long Beach State: 37-20-1

North Carolina State: 39-21

World Series, May 29-June 6, Omaha