LOS ANGELES \u2014 The UCLA baseball team had a few reasons to be dispirited after the first two innings of their super regional against visiting UT-San Antonio on Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n
The Bruins surrendered a home run on the second pitch of the game, gave up another run on a trick play more often seen at the Little League level and failed to capitalize on their own prime scoring opportunity in the second inning.<\/p>\n
But there were still seven innings to go, plenty of time for UCLA right-hander Michael Barnett and the offense to right the ship in the 5-2 victory at Jackie Robinson Stadium.<\/p>\n
The Bruins own a 1-0 lead in the best-of-three matchup heading to Game 2 at noon on Sunday. A win will advance UCLA to its first College World Series since 2013.<\/p>\n
\u201cA nine-inning game is a long game,\u201d said UCLA coach John Savage, who earned his 50th postseason victory at the school. \u201cI always tell them, there\u2019s plenty of opportunities that are still on the table.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barnett (12-1) bounced back from the unwelcome start to allow two runs and six hits over six innings. The junior right-hander struck out one and didn\u2019t walk a batter.<\/p>\n
\u201cA little adversity early on doesn\u2019t matter,\u201d Barnett said. \u201cThis team is built off adversity, and myself being able to recover from that is really special.\u201d<\/p>\n
Roman Martin had two hits and drove in three runs for UCLA, which has won 10 in a row.<\/p>\n
The Bruins didn\u2019t capitalize after putting runners on second and third with no outs in the second off UTSA right-hander Zach Royse, but they came through in the third.<\/p>\n
Back-to-back one-out singles by Dean West and Roch Cholowsky put runners on the corners. Mulivai Levu then lined a two-strike pitch into the right-field corner for an RBI double that cut the lead to 2-1.<\/p>\n
Levu came in ranked third in the nation and tops in the Big Ten with 84 RBIs.<\/p>\n
Martin then tied the score 2-2 when he drove in Cholowsky with a ground out to third.<\/p>\n
The Bruins moved ahead 3-2 in the fourth after loading the bases with one out on singles by Payton Brennan, Cashel Dugger and No. 9 hitter Phoenix Call, followed by a sacrifice fly from West.<\/p>\n
UCLA missed opportunities to expand its lead in the fifth and sixth innings, but put runners on the corners with one out in the eighth before Martin delivered a two-out two-run triple into the right-center field gap to make it 5-2.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery game is going to be a dogfight,\u201d Savage said.<\/p>\n
Barnett, who came in ranked third in the nation in wins and No. 1 in the Big Ten, did not have his first clean inning until the fifth.<\/p>\n
Jack O\u2019Connor relieved Barnett to start the seventh and tossed a 1-2-3 inning. August Souza retired all three batters he faced in the eighth, and Easton Hawk did the same in the ninth.<\/p>\n
The Bruins did not walk a batter or commit an error.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey didn\u2019t give us anything,\u201d UTSA coach Pat Hallmark said.<\/p>\n
UTSA came in with confidence after upsetting second-seeded Texas to win its regional last weekend.<\/p>\n
Barnett had allowed just seven home runs in 75\u2153 innings coming into the game, but Mason Lytle lined the second pitch over the fence in left to give UTSA a 1-0 lead and get his side of the stadium roaring in approval.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey jumped on us, no question about it,\u201d Savage said. \u201cThey had a lot of momentum and, to Michael\u2019s credit, he calmed that down a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n
UCLA appeared to catch a break when UTSA catcher Andrew Stucky overran second base on a single to right by Ty Hodge that would have loaded the bases with one out in the second inning.<\/p>\n
Stucky got tagged out in a rundown for the second out, but the Roadrunners stole a run during the ensuing at-bat when Caden Miller broke for home as Dugger was throwing the ball back to Barnett, and he beat Barnett\u2019s return throw with a head-first slide for a 2-0 lead.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe steal of home, I think it was a lesson learned,\u201d Savage said. \u201cThrowing the ball from his knees, not throwing firm enough. They picked up on that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Originally Published: June 7, 2025 at 7:20 PM PDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES \u2014 The UCLA baseball team had a few reasons to be dispirited after the first two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87476,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2289],"tags":[5,15310,648,1703,1694,2341,185,18075],"class_list":{"0":"post-87674","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-college-baseball","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-big-ten-conference","10":"tag-college-baseball","11":"tag-college-sports","12":"tag-ncaa","13":"tag-ncaa-baseball","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-ucla-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114645927386871808","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}