UCLA Follows New Path

You never know what you will get with the UCLA baseball team. The only sure thing about the Bruins is that it’s rarely the same thing twice.

After surviving a poor six-error effort against Delaware the day before, UCLA did nearly everything right in a 10-5 win Saturday over Oklahoma in a winners’ bracket NCAA regional game before 4,865 at Southwestern Bell Bricktown Ballpark.

It was the kind of effort that many expected from a team ranked in the preseason top five. The Bruins (37-24) still confound their coach but they are one win away from advancing to a best-of-three super regional.

Oklahoma beat Oral Roberts, 9-7, in an elimination game late Saturday and will play UCLA today at 11 a.m. CDT with a second game to follow, if necessary.

“I’ve had to have more patience with this team than any other,” said 26th-year Coach Gary Adams. “This is the way we played the last two-fifths of the season.

“We’re in the driver’s seat, but we still have got a lot of work to do.”

The Bruins got strong pitching from Josh Karp. Boosted by a five-run lead after the first inning, Karp went 7 1/3 innings, giving up just two earned runs and striking out six.

After reliever Ryan Carter got an out, Jon Brandt shut down the Sooners (40-22) over the final 1 1/3 innings.

“I kept the ball down,” said Karp (10-1), who induced 14 ground ball outs. “I worked it in and out and my changeup was good. . . . I had to bear down and get ground balls for key outs.”

Junior catcher Forrest Johnson said Karp was focused.

“I could see it in his eyes,” Johnson said. “Everything was working for him.”

Fundamentals also played a factor. Oklahoma knocked out Karp in the eighth and rallied with four runs to cut the lead to 6-5. In the bottom of the inning, Charles Merricks led off with a double and moved to third on a sacrifice bunt by Randall Shelley.

Shortstop Josh Canales executed a suicide squeeze to score Merricks and Oklahoma reliever Austin Coose threw the ball past first base on the play. UCLA turned it into a four-run inning as Garrett Atkins had a RBI single and Bill Scott hit a two-run double.

“Everyone labels us [a power-hitting team],” Adams said. “We want people to think that’s all we do [is hit home runs]. Believe it or not, we work on the bunting game just as hard as anything else.”