NCAA baseball: UC Irvine’s season ends with loss to UCLA in regional final
LOS ANGELES — The UC Irvine baseball team bounced back from losing its NCAA regional opener to win a pair of elimination games before falling to UCLA on Sunday night at Jackie Robinson Stadium.
Mulivai Levu hit a three-run home run, Dean West and Payton Brennan added two RBIs apiece and UCLA jumped to a big lead and then held on to beat UCI, 8-5, to win the four-team Los Angeles Regional.
UCLA (45-16) clinched its first trip to the super regionals since 2019. The 15th-seeded Bruins will host UT-San Antonio, which upset No. 2 seed Texas to win its regional, in a best-of-three series next weekend.
UCI (43-17) beat Arizona State, 11-6, earlier Sunday to reach the game against the Bruins. The Anteaters, the Big West Conference regular-season champs, made back-to-back NCAA tournament appearances for the first time since they went to six straight tourneys from 2006-11.
Roman Martin’s RBI single off Finnegan Wall (0-1) in the first inning made it 1-0 and the Bruins led the rest of the way. Cashel Dugger hit a single in the second that drove in Brennan, who doubled to lead off the inning, and then scored on a sacrifice fly by Roch Cholowsky to make it 3-0.
Dugger and Phoenix Call drew back-to-back walks to lead off the fourth and West followed with a bunt single to load the bases. Dugger scored on another sacrifice fly by Cholowsky and, after Levu’s homer, Brennan added a sacrifice fly to make it 8-0.
James Castagnola and Alonso Reyes each had an RBI for the Anteaters in the fourth, Anthony Martinez hit a two-run double in the fifth and Reyes hit a lead-off home in the sixth to cap the scoring.
Chris Grothues (3-1) came on in relief of starter Wylan Moss with one out and the bases loaded in the fourth. Grothues got Reyes to groundout, driving in Martinez, and struck out Blake Penso to limit the damage. Easton Hawk pitched a 1-2-3 ninth for his sixth save of the season.
UC Irvine 11, Arizona State 6 (Elimination Game): Chase Call hit two of UCI’s five home runs on Sunday afternoon in their victory over the Sun Devils, who had defeated UCI, 4-2, in Friday night’s regional opener.
Alonso Reyes, Jacob McCombs and James Castagnola also went deep for UCI.
Call and Reyes hit two-run home runs in a four-run fourth inning that gave the Anteaters a 6-1 lead.
UCI starter Ryder Brooks had a 7-2 lead heading to the bottom of the sixth but was pulled after allowing a two-run double by Brandon Compton. Ricky Ojeda replaced Brooks and gave up an RBI double by Beckett Zavorek to make it 7-5. Brooks was charged with five runs.
The Anteaters responded in the top of the seventh, scoring four runs that included a two-run home run by Castagnola.
Brooks (7-3) got the win. Ojeda and David Utagawa combined to allow one run in 3⅔ innings.
Derek Schaefer (3-1) allowed five runs in three-plus innings for the Sun Devils (36-24).
