Weekend Preview: Plenty Of Drama Out West

The Pacific-12 and Big West conferences do not have conference tournaments like the rest of the country. But the schedule in both leagues provides plenty of last-week drama anyway.

In the Pac-12, the two top teams in the league play head-to-head on the season’s final weekend, separated by one game. At the start of the year, a glance at the schedule would have presumed that matchup to be UCLA at Oregon State, or perhaps Southern California at Arizona State.

“I don’t think anyone in Vegas put money on us at Utah,” Washington assistant coach Donegal Fergus said with a laugh. “But we’re excited about it.”

The Utes have led the Pac for much of the season, much to the consternation of the rest of the nation. Utah sits 23-26 overall but at 17-10 has a one-game lead on the Huskies (31-19, 16-11), who visit Salt Lake City for a three-game series.

One twist to the series, which will be played at Smith’s Ballpark, is that all three games are scheduled for noon local time starts. The reason for the early start times? Smith’s Ballpark also serves as home of the Triple-A Salt Lake Bees of the Pacific Coast League, which also is scheduled to be home this weekend against the Nashville Sounds. Those games start at 6:35 p.m. local time, meaning the Pac-12 games have a 4-hour, 30-minute curfew. That shouldn’t be a huge problem, really, but this is college baseball in the West. Anything can happen.

Utah, which has reached the NCAA tournament once since 1960 (2009), has to win the series to win the Pac-12 and its automatic bid. Washington wins the tiebreaker and wins the automatic bid with a series win; a 1-2 finish would likely hurt the Huskies’ at-large chances considering Utah’s RPI is 102. Washington enters the series at 52 in the RPI, firmly on the bubble.

The rest of the Pac schedule includes Arizona playing a non-league series at Hawaii, which will ding the Wildcats’ RPI of 25; a series loss wouldn’t be disastrous but likely would cost Arizona any chance of being announced as a regional host on Sunday. Arizona State (33-19, 15-12) also needs a series win against the Trojans this weekend to improve its hosting chances.

Meanwhile, Oregon State (32-19, 13-14) hosts 25-28 UCLA, and while a series win won’t jack up the Beavers’ RPI of 49, coach Pat Casey’s club has lost seven of its last 10. A series loss to the Bruins may doom their at-large chances.

Oregon (29-23, 14-13) got an at-large bid with an RPI north of 60 last season; a sweep at Stanford, though, would give the Ducks a top-four Pac finish and might be enough for an at-large bid again. Preseason conference favorite California (30-20, 12-15) needs a sweep at Washington State to keep its faint postseason hopes alive and give scouts one more look at righthander Daulton Jefferies.

The 6-foot Bears ace missed seven weeks with a muscle pull behind his right shoulder but threw free and easy for three innings against Utah in his return outing Monday, sitting 91-94 mph with his fastball. His changeup was its usual plus weapon, according to two sources, while his slider got better as the night went on, with two sharp mid-80s breakers in his third and final inning. He’ll start again this weekend against the Cougars.

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Big West Showdown

Hawaii stunned Cal State Fullerton last weekend, winning the series in Fullerton, while Long Beach State extended its winning streak to nine games, its longest streak since 2007. That set up this weekend’s showdown for the Big West title in one of the college game’s best rivalries as the Titans invade Blair Field at the Beach for three games Thursday through Saturday.

The Dirtbags are seeking their first outright Big West title since 2003, which they would get with a sweep; a series win gives them the conference’s automatic regional berth for the first time since 2008, as they’d own the tiebreaker. The Beach, which did not bid to be a regional host due to pending renovations to Blair Field, also has the higher RPI (42) and could weather a series loss better than the Titans (55), who seem to be on the bubble despite a strong non-conference schedule. Fullerton played Stanford and Texas Tech on the road, plus Indiana, Arizona State, Maryland and Wichita State in non-league series, but the home series loss to Hawaii (No. 169) did serious damage.

Fullerton could be without first baseman Tanner Pinkston, who started the first 52 games but dislocated an elbow in Tuesday’s loss to Southern California, though the Titans got catcher Chris Hudgins back in that game after missing 20 games with a finger injury.

The Dirtbags are riding the hot bat of sophomore left fielder Brock Lundquist, who is 31-for-69 (.449) during his 17-game hitting streak. Long Beach State is 14-3 in that stretch.

“It’s going to be a real cool atmosphere,” Beach coach Troy Buckley told the Long Beach Press-Telegram. “I’m really proud of this team. They put themselves in this position and they deserve to enjoy it.”