OMAHA — UCLA has won a nation-leading 106 NCAA championships in 17 sports. Not one of them is in baseball — yet.
The Bruins’ chance is here, against South Carolina, in the best-of-three College World Series finals starting tonight.
“It’s obviously known as a basketball school with Coach John Wooden and everything he did at UCLA and all the national championships and all the NBA players, and then certainly football has a rich tradition as well, and softball and gymnastics and volleyball and golf,” UCLA baseball coach John Savage said Sunday. “Every day we go in the Hall of Fame room and we go in the weight room and you see all the national championships, and baseball doesn’t have anything underneath it.”
UCLA hopes to add a national title to the ones the school won in softball and women’s gymnastics this year. The baseball team’s opportunity has been a long time coming.
UCLA made it to the CWS in 1969 and 1997 and went 0-2 each time.
The Bruins (51-15) are in the finals just a year after finishing 27-29 and not making the 64-team NCAA Tournament. They have ridden the strong pitching of starters Gerrit Cole, Trevor Bauer and Rob Rasmussen — and their offense has been timely, cranking out 15 hits in Saturday’s 10-3 rout of Texas Christian.
South Carolina reached the CWS finals in 1975, 1977 and 2002, losing each time under the old tournament format that ended with a single national championship game. The best-of-three finals started in 2003, a year too late for coach Ray Tanner and the Gamecocks.
“Back when we were in this position before, we had finished on an early evening on a Friday and we had a noon game on Saturday. It was set up for television,” Tanner said. “We were excited. We were energetic. It was a short turnaround and it wasn’t the best of three. Is that going to make it easier for us? Absolutely not. But I think it’s the way that it should be done.”
UCLA will start Cole (11-3), the New York Yankees’ 2008 first-round draft pick, in Game 1. Tanner didn’t say his choice to start. He’s deciding among Blake Cooper (12-2), Tyler Webb (3-2) and Jay Brown (3-0). Cooper has started twice in the CWS but would be coming off only three days’ rest.
The Gamecocks (52-16) have won four elimination games to get to this point. They beat Oklahoma in 12 innings after being down to their last strike, and they got an improbable three-hitter from Michael Roth, a career situational reliever called on to start against Clemson on Friday.
South Carolina wasn’t a top-10 team in the national polls until mid-April. The Gamecocks lost the Southeastern Conference’s regular-season title on the final weekend against Florida and went 0-2 in the SEC Tournament.
They have played four one-run games in the NCAA Tournament — winning three, including Saturday’s 4-3 victory over archrival Clemson.
