Wins for UCLA, Pepperdine Men’s Tennis

UCLA and Pepperdine advanced to regional finals of the NCAA men’s tennis tournament with 4-0 victories on Friday.

The Bruins shut out Western Michigan at the L.A. Tennis Center on the UCLA campus, and the Waves blanked New Mexico at Tempe, Ariz.

UCLA will play San Diego State, a 4-1 winner over Tulsa, in today’s 3 p.m. final at the Tennis Center, and Pepperdine takes on host Arizona State, which beat Hofstra, in a noon final at Tempe. The winners advance to the third round at Athens, Ga., next weekend.

In UCLA’s win over Western Michigan, Jean-Noel Ginda, the Bruins’ No. 1 player, defeated Mohamed Dakki, 6-3, 6-0, and No. 4 Jong-Min Lee defeated Steve Pillon, 6-3, 6-2. The doubles team of Marcin Rozpedski and Chris Sands got things started off for UCLA with an 8-2 victory over Kyle Gernofer and Demain Pons.

Before the UCLA men’s final today, the UCLA women face Western Michigan at noon in a first-round match. The Colorado women’s team faces South Alabama at 9 a.m.

At Tempe, Pepperdine freshman Sebastien Graeff defeated Nicolas Dubey, 6-4, 6-2, and freshman Chase Exon downed Michael Polasek, 6-0, 2-6, 6-1. Junior Anthony Ross topped John Kowalski, 7-6, 6-1.

The Waves have won eight of the last nine matches, and the long loss was a 4-3 setback to No. 5 Stanford on April 14.

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Stanford defeated UCLA, 8-7, in Pacific 10 baseball at UCLA even though the Bruins outhit the Cardinals, 15-11.

Chase Utley and Jason Green had three hits for UCLA, 29-28 overall and 12-10 in the Pac-10, and Bill Scott homered and had three RBIs.

John Gall went four for five for Stanford (39-12, 18-4).

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Long Beach State’s Kristi Fox threw her first no-hitter and Traci Hensel threw a two-hitter as the 49er women (32-19, 16-7) notched 3-0 and 5-0 Big West softball victories in a doubleheader with Sacramento State (27-25, 12-11) at Long Beach.

A hit batter and an error kept Fox from pitching a perfect game, and Hensel faced the minimum 21 batters in the second game.

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Stanford’s Tracey Lawyer, two-time defending Pacific 10 champion in the heptathlon, is well on her way to winning a third title after winning three of the day’s four events to set a day one record of 3,740 points at Tempe.

California’s Bevan Har was the first-day leader in the decathlon.