Pepperdine Earns Spot in Playoffs

The Pepperdine Waves are thankful. Thankful they are the West Coast Conference baseball champions, thankful they have a spot in the NCAA Division I tournament, but mostly thankful they have Steve Kleen.

The junior standout went three for five with a two-run home run and five runs batted in during a 12-10 comeback victory at Loyola Marymount.

And all that came before Kleen moved from first base to the pitcher’s mound in the ninth inning to claim his eighth save of the season.

After falling way behind early, the Waves went to bat in the bottom of the eighth trailing, 10-6. Four Loyola Marymount pitchers, two walks and one balk later, the inning ended with Pepperdine on top, 12-10.

That was when Kleen took the mound, facing three batters and striking out one. The win gave the Waves (28-30) a spot in the NCAA tournament.

Pepperdine Coach Steve Rodriguez said the come-from-behind win is the kind of play he has come to expect.

“You could see there was a no-die kind of attitude in the dugout, and I think there was the whole game,” he said.

“Even when we got down 10-3, you could see there was some life in our guys, and they knew that if they just scratched and crawled and put a couple runs up that we would at least give it a run.”

Loyola Marymount finished 32-22-1.

-- Kelsie Smith

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UCLA’s Daniela Bercek and Lauren Fisher won the NCAA Division I women’s tennis title with a 6-4, 6-4 doubles victory over Marshall’s Jessica Johnson and Ashley Kroh at Athens, Ga.

Stanford sophomore Amber Liu won 12 of the final 16 points to defeat Fresno State freshman Jelena Pandzic, 6-4, 0-6, 6-3, to win her second consecutive singles championship.

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Oklahoma led Stanford, 2-1, after five innings at the NCAA Division I Softball World Series when play was stopped because of thunderstorms and tornadoes in the Oklahoma City area. The game will resume the game this morning. The winner plays defending champion UCLA in the semifinals.