Titans hold off Bruins, 4-3, in Super Regional

Cal State Fullerton’s Noe Ramirez showed that UCLA hasn’t cornered the market on starting pitching.

The Bruins rolled into the Super Regional behind a starting staff that was barely touched in last week’s regional. What they ran into was Ramirez, whose dominating performance Friday led the Titans to a 4-3 victory at Jackie Robinson Field.

Ramirez gave up doubles to two of the first three batters he faced, then overwhelmed the Bruins. He struck out 13 batters in seven innings, and Nick Ramirez got out of a first-and-third, no-out jam in the ninth.

Game 2 is tonight.

UCLA has now lost 19 of 22 games to Fullerton since John Savage became the Bruins coach in 2005. That includes a 1-5 record in postseason, as the Titans eliminated the Bruins in 2007and 2008.

Such talk made Fullerton Coach Dave Serrano a bit antsy this week.

“Yeah, the numbers mean something, but this weekend it’s whoever gets two out of three,” Serrano said. “It doesn’t matter what the past is, it what happens here.”

But Noe Ramirez had the Bruins reliving the past.

He retired 12 of 14 batters from the third through sixth inning. The Bruins loaded the bases with no out in the seventh, but Ramirez struck out two batters and got Blair Dunlap to line out to shortstop Christian Colon.

Ramirez was one of the battered Titans during the season.

He missed three weeks after suffering a broken bone in the wrist of his glove hand in a freak accident. Ramirez was running on the warning track during practice and was struck in the head by a fly ball, breaking the bone when he fell to the ground.

Ramirez won six consecutive starts after returning from the injury before Friday’s game.

Fullerton was without outfielder Gary Brown, who leads the team with a .438 batting average. Brown, drafted 24th overall by the San Francisco Giants, has not played since breaking the middle finger on his left hand while stealing second base against Long Beach State on May 16. He will not play in the series.

“We had to really dig in when we lost Gary,” Colon said. “We had to find some toughness in our lineup.”

Colon provided a little grit Saturday, hooking Gerrit Cole’s first pitch in the fifth just inside the left-field foul pole.

The solo homer, Colon’s 17th on the season, gave the Titans a 4-1 lead.

Cole threw three hitless innings, but his control became shaky in the fourth. He walked Richie Pedroza and hit Corey Jones. The wildness hurt him when Nick Ramirez lined a two-run single and Billy Marcoe followed with a sacrifice fly for a 3-1 lead.

chris.foster@latimes.com

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