‘Beach Ball Is Buoyed by Pitching

The Southland’s only top-10 college baseball team continued its early-season success with a pitching-dominated three-game sweep in its opening Big West Conference series last weekend.

The surprise is that the team was not Cal State Fullerton.

The pitching-rich Titans, who opened the season ranked second, behind Stanford, lost two of three nonconference games at California and began this week 9-7 and ranked No. 14 in the Collegiate Baseball poll.

Meanwhile, Long Beach State swept Cal Poly San Luis Obispo at home and ascended to No. 8 with a 15-4 overall record, its best start since 1994.

The 49ers, who have won 14 of their last 15 games, are no strangers to national prominence. Long Beach has made 10 regional and four College World Series appearances under Coach Dave Snow.

But Long Beach traditionally rounds into playoff shape, and the upper echelon of the polls, after working out the kinks through the first part of the season.

The return of outfielder Chuck Lopez has helped ease the usual rough spots for a team that a few weeks ago became the first nonconference opponent to sweep Arkansas at Fayetteville.

Lopez, a senior, batted .422 in 1998, then sat out all of last season recovering from elbow surgery.

Lopez is batting .348 with two home runs and 12 runs batted in. His 17-game hitting streak ended Sunday against San Luis Obispo.

Sophomore second baseman A.J. LaBarbera is the 49ers’ leading hitter at .423.

But the story so far has been Long Beach’s pitching staff. The 49ers have a 2.95 earned-run average with five complete games and three shutouts.

Sophomore right-hander Matt Paz is 6-0 with a 1.60 ERA. He struck out a career-high 10 batters and pitched his third complete game Saturday. Paz has defeated USC, California, Texas Tech, Arkansas, Wichita State and San Luis Obispo.

Junior right-hander Jeff Leuenberger is 2-0 with a 3.35 ERA. He pitched a two-hit shutout against San Luis Obispo and also has a complete-game victory over UCLA.

Junior right-hander Jason Berni is 1-1 with a 2.79 ERA, and senior Casey Olenberger (2-0, 0.00 ERA) has not given up an earned run in 10 1/3 innings in five appearances.

Long Beach plays host to Nevada this weekend. The Wolf Pack swept Cal State Northridge last weekend and has won eight of its last nine games.

Fullerton, which played at No. 11 Arizona State Tuesday opens conference play at home against Pacific.

UC Santa Barbara (9-10), which lost two of three games at Arizona last weekend, is at Sacramento State.

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USC (13-7), ranked 12th, plays a nonconference series this weekend at Palo Alto against third-ranked Stanford (14-5), then plays host to Washington State in its Pacific 10 Conference opener the following weekend.

USC plays host to Stanford on April 20-22 in a Pac-10 series.

The Trojans were swept at home by ninth-ranked Houston last weekend, the first time USC was swept at Dedeaux Field since Stanford did it in 1997.

It was the seventh consecutive road victory for Houston, which came to Los Angeles fresh off a sweep of Louisiana State at Baton Rouge.

UCLA (11-10) plays host to Harvard this weekend, hoping to continue a turnaround after falling out of the polls from No. 2.

“I don’t know of too many teams where things go smoothly all through the year,” UCLA Coach Gary Adams said. “Hopefully, we’re just having our problems at the beginning.”

The Bruins ended a five-game losing streak with a home sweep of Bradley last weekend.

UCLA’s spiral began Feb. 15, when the then 6-1 Bruins blew a 4-2 lead in the bottom of the ninth inning of a 5-4 loss at Loyola Marymount.

Three days later, the Bruins hit a school-record seven homers and still lost, 17-13, to North Carolina when the Tar Heels scored 13 runs in the ninth inning.

“Our relievers have just not been able to hold the opponent,” Adams said. “We’ve had small leads, average leads and sometime insurmountable leads and we still have managed to blow them.

“We have to get the guys in the bullpen to step it up. If they do, it could be a very good team.”

Adams and USC Coach Mike Gillespie agree that defending champion Stanford remains the team to beat in the Pac-10.

“Their pitching makes the difference,” Adams said. “They have an experienced team with a solid pitching staff.”

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Loyola Marymount, ranked 23rd by Baseball America and 29th by Collegiate Baseball, swept San Francisco in its West Coast Conference opener last weekend. The Lions (14-6, 3-0 in the WCC) continue their WCC schedule this weekend at Gonzaga and play at USC next Tuesday.

Pepperdine (12-9, 4-1), coming off a three-game sweep of Portland, travels to St. Mary’s this weekend.