Titans Lean on Unlikely Help

Ken Ravizza wore a throwback Cal State Fullerton baseball cap to the Titans’ practice Saturday morning, and it had nothing to do with making a fashion statement.

Ravizza was trying to invoke the spirit of the 1984 Titans, who rebounded to win the national title after losing a game early in the College World Series. The 2006 Titans face a similar challenge after losing their series opener against North Carolina on Friday.

“I brought it with me,” Ravizza said of the cap, “just in case.”

Ravizza is the ultimate rally monkey, a longtime sports psychology professor at Fullerton who has adopted his school’s baseball team as one of his primary clients since 1984. His job is to soothe jittery players and to help coax premium performance under adverse circumstances, and he uses gimmicks as well as words.

He has had dirt from Fullerton’s Goodwin Field sprinkled on the mound at Rosenblatt Stadium, and during the Titans’ national-title run in 2004 he placed a miniature plastic toilet, complete with a swirling sound when flushed, inside the dugout so that players could purge negative thoughts.

The flushing metaphor is especially appropriate for these Titans, who must quickly erase the memory of a crushing 13-inning loss against the Tar Heels in which they stranded the potential winning run in scoring position in three innings and had a runner picked off third base.

“I think the biggest thing is they need to take the lessons they learned, forgive themselves and move on,” Ravizza said. “This is not Disneyland. There’s nothing magical about it.”

The odds are stacked against the Titans (48-14), who need to win four consecutive games to reach a best-of-three championship series. And with a loss to Georgia Tech (50-17) at 11 a.m. PDT today, Fullerton would head home after only two games for the first time since 1990.

“This is a huge bounce-back thing, and it’s certainly not going to be easy,” Fullerton Coach George Horton said. “Winning four games in a row against any Division I opponent is a difficult enough task, and now you have [to play] the best teams in the country.”

Horton and his players say that Ravizza, 57, the only sports psychologist to accompany any of the eight teams to the series, provides a secret weapon of sorts. He reminds the players to rely on routines and basic baseball concepts in the face of uncertainty.

“A lot of it’s for the young guys, helping them get through tough situations when they’re nervous and they’ve never played in front of 27,000 people before,” said senior pitcher Dustin Miller, scheduled to start today’s game.

Ravizza also helped counsel Miller through three difficult years in which Miller considered quitting baseball after he was unable to pitch because of shoulder and arm injuries.

“These aren’t just sports skills, they’re life skills,” Ravizza said. “It’s about dealing with rejection and dealing with frustration and bouncing back, and that’s why I love doing what I do.

“I see some of these guys 15 years from now and they come up to me and they say, ‘Hey, Ken, I’m using this stuff more now than I did as a player.’ It’s beautiful. That’s really what sports are about, and we forget it at times.”

*

Rice’s Eddie Degerman lost his no-hit bid -- and his lead -- in the seventh inning, before the Owls rallied to beat Georgia, 6-4, Saturday in a first-round game.

After the Owls’ 2-0 lead became a 4-2 deficit, they rallied with four runs in the bottom of the seventh. Joe Savery put the Owls in front again with a two-run single.

Rice (56-11) advanced to a Monday game against Miami (42-22), which beat Oregon State (44-15), 11-1, behind Dennis Raben’s home run and four RBIs.

Georgia (47-22) will play an elimination game Monday against the Beavers.

*

The Associated Press contributed to this report.