UCLA Hopes for an Invitation

The season-long mission of the UCLA baseball team was to get retiring Coach Gary Adams into the postseason one final time. It appears that goal will be accomplished.

The Bruins still have to sweat out today’s announcement of the 64-team NCAA tournament field, but they strongly improved their chances for an at-large berth with an 11-6 victory over Oregon State in the regular-season finale Sunday at Corvallis, Ore.

UCLA (33-27) won two of three games against the Beavers to clinch third place in the Pacific 10 Conference with a 14-10 record. The Bruins won their five conference road series.

Junior Wes Whisler, a possible high-round choice in next week’s amateur draft, hit a three-run homer in the eighth inning to cap a five-run outburst that gave the Bruins a 10-4 lead. The left-handed Whisler earned the victory, giving up four runs and eight hits in seven innings.

Left fielder Billy Susdorf hit a three-run homer for the Bruins.

UC Irvine suffered a blow to its hopes for an at-large bid when Washington’s Kyle Larsen drove in two runs with a single to cap a four-run rally in the bottom of the ninth inning and give the Huskies an 8-7 victory, completing a three-game sweep of the Anteaters in Seattle.

The four runs in the ninth came against freshman closer Blair Erickson, who had an NCAA-leading 17 saves. Jordan Szabo hit a solo homer in the first and had run-scoring singles in the third and ninth to help give Irvine a 7-4 lead.

The Anteaters (34-21-1) dropped eight of their last 11 games, including the last three to Washington (37-18-1) by a total of four runs.

“If we had won one or maybe two of these games, I think that would have made us a lock,” Coach John Savage said.

Savage hopes the Division I baseball selection committee will look at the Anteaters’ entire season, in which they spent two months in the national rankings.

“In terms of strength of schedule and RPI, I think we’ve done what we needed to do,” Savage said.

“We have quality wins and quality losses. We’ve lost four series all year. This team deserves to be in the tournament.”

Big West Conference champion Cal State Fullerton was selected as one of the 16 teams that will play host to four-team regionals next weekend. Fullerton (36-20), which has won 21 of 25, was also selected last year and advanced to the College World Series.

Long Beach State (36-19), the Big West runner-up, was not selected to play host after losing three games to Miami and seven in a row to end the season. The 49ers still figure to gain an at-large berth.

Pac-10 champion Stanford (44-12) was the only other team in the West selected as a host site.