New Challengers May Step Up

Among the local college baseball programs, it seems that season after season the same teams hoist conference title flags.

Cal State Fullerton and Long Beach State rule the Big West Conference. Pepperdine has finished first or second in the West Coast Conference every year since the first term of the Reagan administration. USC has 12 national titles but finished behind Oregon State in the Pacific-10 Conference last season and is expected to do so again this year.

Asked to assess this year’s Big West race, Fullerton Coach George Horton said, “I’d be lying to you if I would say I would pick anyone but us or Long Beach to win the title.”

So we’re looking at the same old, same old? Maybe not. There are signs that a few other teams might be poised for a breakthrough.

In the WCC, Loyola Marymount looks to challenge Pepperdine after last season dropping two of three games to the Waves in the conference championship series.

In the Pacific 10, UCLA features two of the conference’s most intriguing pitchers and has almost nowhere to go but up after finishing next to last in 2005.

And in the Big West, UC Irvine appears ready to contend under second-year Coach Dave Serrano and UC Riverside returns all but one starter from last year’s fourth-place team.

“It’s tough to overtake those teams overnight,” Serrano said. “Fullerton wasn’t built overnight; Long Beach wasn’t built overnight.

“We want to make this a nationally recognized program. I know what it takes to get there and I hope I can continue to build on what I’ve learned from great coaches and continue to build UC Irvine into something special.”

Short of convincing the next Jered Weaver to wear Anteater blue instead of 49er pinstripes, Serrano said there are other, less tangible ways for his team to upset the status quo.

“We have a saying that, ‘Will will always beat skill,’ ” Serrano said. “That’s what we’re thriving on, that we have a lot of players striving to be successful. We can’t control wins and losses all the time, but we can control how hard we play the game and how much we’re improving every day.”

It helps when your entire starting rotation and seven of your eight position players return. That is the enviable position Riverside Coach Doug Smith is in as the Highlanders prepare for their opener today at home against San Francisco.

Riverside lost only its left fielder -- and replaced him with junior college All-American D.J. Hollingsworth. The Highlanders’ starting rotation of James Simmons, Taylor Bills and Haley Winter should give them an edge against teams with less experience.

“We feel that we’re in pretty capable hands with those three guys,” said Smith, whose team closed last season with a weekend series victory over Fullerton. “I believe this year our pitching is going to be our strength for the first time in a long time. I’m really looking forward to that because pitching keeps you in every game.”

Only three times since 1991 has neither Long Beach nor Fullerton won at least a share of a conference title, but Horton said the Titans might struggle to find consistency early. Fullerton features sophomore pitcher Wes Roemer, the Big West’s freshman pitcher of the year in 2005, and a middle infield of Blake Davis and Justin Turner that Horton calls “as good as there is in college baseball.”

Still, Horton acknowledged that “more programs are ready to compete with us even if we are at our best.... There are going to be teams with more losses winning the [conference] championships and bringing everyone closer together.”

Long Beach’s retooled rotation includes only one returner, junior right-hander Jared Hughes, who will face a stiff test in the 49ers’ opener tonight at Blair Field when he goes up against USC ace Ian Kennedy.

The Trojans will be hard-pressed to topple Oregon State, which returns all of its key pitchers from a team that last year won its first Pac-10 title since 1952.

But USC Coach Mike Gillespie said there is another less heralded conference team that frightens him -- UCLA.

“They have pitching to match anyone’s pitching,” said Gillespie, who singled out Hector Ambriz and Dave Huff. “UCLA is kind of the mystery team in terms of how good they can be, but I expect them to be very good.”

Pepperdine will try to defend its title in the reconfigured WCC, which is no longer split into divisions. Loyola Marymount and pitching-rich teams from San Francisco and San Diego figure to be the top challengers.

“We know that people are going to be gunning for us every year and we welcome that,” Pepperdine Coach Steve Rodriguez said. “It’s just a matter of whether we can measure up to that competition.”

Again.