College Baseball : Waves (14-1) Cruising Toward Title

Don’t look now, but it appears that at least one conference race has already been determined.

Pepperdine still has nine West Coast Athletic Conference games remaining, but the Waves, who have won their last 13 league games and are 14-1 in WCAC play, would seem to have an insurmountable lead.

The Waves are 6 1/2 games ahead of Santa Clara, which is 8-8. They will play St. Mary’s, the fourth-place club at 5-6, in a three-game series this weekend at Malibu.

Pepperdine is playing exceptionally well, perhaps as well as or better than any team on the West Coast. The Waves, who have won 9 straight and 13 of their last 15, have one of the best records in the country, 32-8-3.

The Waves, who won the WCAC title in 1985 and tied Loyola for first in 1986, are 53-10 in league games since the WCAC was realigned for baseball in 1985. They are 29-2-2 this season in games in which they have scored at least five runs, and have outscored their WCAC opposition, 138-60.

Cal State Fullerton played a little, uh, make that a lot of long ball against Nevada Las Vegas last Friday night in Las Vegas. The Titans, who had hit only 24 home runs in their first 37 games, hit nine as they beat the Rebels, 24-10.

Nine homers in a game is a Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. record but the Titans fell short of the NCAA record of 11 set by Maryland against Delaware State in 1980 and equaled by Georgia Tech against Maryland in 1985.

High-scoring games featuring many homers are not uncommon at Roger Barnson Field, where the desert winds often affect the flight of the ball. In 1985, for example, UNLV hit seven home runs and Cal State Long Beach six in a game won by the Rebels, 24-22. The 13 homers set an NCAA record.

Saturday night, Fullerton and UNLV combined for eight in the Titans’ 15-10 victory. Curiously, UNLV, which had hit 38 in its first 34 games, didn’t hit any Friday night. The wind must have been blowing out only when Fullerton was batting.

Stanford won two of three from UCLA in a series matching the best teams in the Pacific 10 Southern Division over the weekend at Stanford’s Sunken Diamond.

The victories enabled Stanford to even the season series between the clubs at three victories apiece. Of greater significance, though, is that the Cardinal, now 12-4, leads UCLA, 12-6, by a full game.

UCLA won Friday’s series opener, 14-6, and had the satisfaction of roughing up Jack McDowell, one of college baseball’s premier pitchers. The Bruins chased the junior right-hander in the fourth inning, when they scored six runs.

McDowell was coming off a 4-0 shutout of USC in which he restricted the Trojans to two singles while striking out 13. He was 4-0 against the league--5-1 overall--with a 3.31 earned-run average. But he lasted only 3 innings Friday against UCLA, yielding 10 hits, 3 of them homers, and 8 runs, all earned.

If there were any doubts as to the balance of the Pac-10 Southern Division they should have been dispelled over the weekend when California swept Arizona at Berkeley.

Arizona, the defending national champion, fell to 6-12 and is in fifth place, seven games behind Stanford. The last-place Bears, now 5-11, were swept by Arizona in February at Tucson.

In Saturday’s 10-3 defeat, the Wildcats, who were leading the league in hitting with a .324 average, were held hitless for seven innings by Mike Mathews, a sophomore right-hander with a 1-4 record. Dave Shermet ended the no-hit bid with a double leading off the eighth.

See How They Run: Under Rod Dedeaux, USC played for the big inning. Of course, with such power hitters as Dave Kingman, Fred Lynn, Rich Dauer, Steve Kemp, Dave Hostetler and Mark McGwire in his lineup, Dedeaux’s strategy wasn’t hard to understand.

New USC Coach Mike Gillespie doesn’t have many long ball threats, so he has had to manufacture runs. Therefore, the Trojans are doing more running than at any time in school history

With 17 games left, the Trojans already have broken the school record for stolen bases. They began the week with 79 in 113 attempts. The old mark of 64 was set in 1964. Individually, second baseman Don Buford has 18, which is just two shy of the record set in 1969 by shortstop Cal Meier.

College Baseball Notes Cal State Fullerton’s home run barrage at Nevada Las Vegas helped the Titans sweep the three-game series and improve their PCAA record to 8-1. Fullerton, which leads second-place UC Irvine by one game, has won eight straight league games since losing the opener to UC Santa Barbara. The Titans are 28-12 overall after starting the season 1-5. . . . When Cal’s Mike Mathews came close to throwing a no-hitter against Arizona Saturday, it was the second near no-hitter in the West within a week. Fullerton’s Mike Harkey had one going for 8 innings against Long Beach the previous Saturday. Harkey’s no-hit bid was ended by pinch-hitter Scott Lewis’ ground single. He finished with a two-hitter as the Titans won, 9-0. . . . Add streaking teams: Loyola swept USF over the weekend, extending its winning streak to seven games. The Lions are just 6-7-1 in WCAC play, but are 29-14-1 overall. . . . Add Fullerton homers: Ken Garcia hit two of the nine Friday night, which was twice as many as he had going into the game. . . . UCLA second baseman Torey Lovullo hit two homers Sunday at Stanford, giving him 18, tops in the nation. He hit six in six games against the Cardinal. Of the 18, 13 have been in Pac-10 Southern Division games. He has driven in 50 runs, 35 in league games.