Long Beach State, UCLA and Cal State Fullerton selected to NCAA baseball regional field

The UCLA baseball team watched the NCAA regional selection show in their clubhouse Monday morning. When “UCLA” flashed across the screen, the players jumped in unison and cheered.

Entering Monday, there didn’t seem to be much drama surrounding the Bruins. They’d finished third in the Pac-12 Conference and appeared to be relatively safely in.

The Bruins, it turned out, had reason to be worried. They were the second-to-last team in.

It was a day when the West Coast was again squeezed to the periphery of the tournament. Long Beach State, an automatic qualifier, and Cal State Fullerton, an at-large selection, also made the tournament, but Loyola Marymount missed out reaching the regionals for the first time since 2000. Only nine West Coast teams made the field overall, down two from last season.

“It just seems like that number’s getting smaller and smaller,” UCLA coach John Savage said.

The West did net three regional hosts, a year after failing to produce any. Oregon State was the top overall seed, and Stanford and Long Beach State will host a regional. The 49ers will play San Diego State in their first game. UCLA, seeded third, and No. 2 seed Texas complete the bracket. Both first-day games are scheduled for Friday.

Fullerton, the No. 2 seed in the Stanford regional, will play Brigham Young on Thursday.

Savage said the Bruins were happy to be in the field and have their sights on the College World Series. But the process left him mystified.

“We beat Stanford two out of three at Stanford,” he said. “They’re a national seed. We beat Oregon State, one of the four losses they’ve lost. They’re a national seed. I mean, how are we the second to last team in?”

He continued: ‘There’s one reason and one reason only. That’s RPI.”

West Coast coaches have long held the Ratings Percentage Index, or RPI, in contempt, believing its formula penalized the parity of a deep region.

The selection committee did not diverge drastically from RPI, which likely prevented teams like Loyola Marymount, Gonzaga and Utah from earning bids.

At the top end of the seeding process, “I think they got the sites darn near correct,” said Long Beach State coach Troy Buckley. But, he said, “I think the pairings were a little eye-stretching.”

Long Beach’s regional looks to be particularly bruising. There is little separating the four teams. The 49ers, the top seed, were a combined 0-4 against UCLA and San Diego State, the bottom two teams. UCLA defeated Long Beach twice but was a combined 0-5 against San Diego State and Texas.

“I think it’s the toughest regional in the country,” Savage said.

Only one Southland team can advance to Omaha for the CWS. If Fullerton wins its regional, it will play the winner of the Long Beach State regional.

zach.helfand@latimes.com

Follow Zach Helfand on Twitter @zhelfand