The UCLA baseball team entered Saturday needing four consecutive wins to advance out of the Auburn Regional of the NCAA Tournament. The Bruins easily cut the task to three with a 16-2 blowout of Southeastern Louisiana on Saturday.
No. 2 seed UCLA (39-23) still has a tough road ahead to make it out of the four-team regional, needing two wins Sunday. The Bruins will look to make it out of the losers’ bracket Sunday morning when they play the loser of Saturday night’s matchup between No. 1 seed Auburn (38-20) and No. 3 seed Florida State (34-23). If the Bruins win, they’ll face the winner of that game and look to force a rematch Monday to take the regional.
The Bruins’ bats delivered early Saturday with three runs in the first and then batted around in the third to take a 7-1 lead and force Southeastern Louisiana starter Andrew Landry out of the game.
UCLA finished with 19 hits, including two home runs and three doubles, while holding Southeastern Louisiana (30-31) to three hits.
Ethan Gourson highlighted the three-run first with a double high off the left-field wall. It was his 23rd double of the season, a freshman program record. Two more runs scored on an error by Landry, who overthrew the first baseman on a comebacker to the mound by Kyle Karros.
The Bruins sent nine men to the plate in the third. Michael Curialle came around to score after leading off with a walk. Two of the three hits in the inning were singles that scored two runs each – with Darius Perry and Cody Schrier delivering the key hits to widen the UCLA lead to six.
UCLA starter Ethan Flanagan settled down after the base paths were busy the first couple of innings. Flanagan gave up a run in the second inning but induced an inning-ending double play with the bases loaded and one out to limit the damage. The freshman then retired the next seven before departing in the fifth with 81 pitches when he let the first two batters reach.
Reliever Jake Saum then escaped a bases-loaded jam with nobody out to keep Southeastern Louisiana from getting back into the game.
Home runs by Carson Yates and Ethan Gourson helped UCLA pad the lead, as the Bruins scored three runs each in the sixth and seventh.
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