This weekend, East Lansing crafted and set the best bear trap that they could find. Their end goal is to get to the Big Ten Conference Tournament at Omaha in late May. In order to make that possibility a lot easier, they knew they needed fur from the coat of the nation’s No. 1 team. The UCLA Bruins sleepwalked around the trees on the banks of the Red Cedar River for 24 total innings and still escaped with a regular season conference title and their perfect 24-0 B1G record intact.
The UCLA team that I watched for much of the weekend looked like a team that needed to taste their own blood (and maybe they still do).
In the back of my mind I’m thinking, “eh, cold road trip, sleepy environment. That’s typical college sports.” But I think if you ask anybody on that staff or roster, I think they’d say they haven’t played their best baseball during the Minnesota/Sac State/Michigan State weekends, including the midweek games in between.
In all three games, outfielders were constantly missing cutoffs and throws were getting away in the infield. UCLA was credited with 5 errors in the three games, but it honestly felt like more. The Bruins were giving Sparty extra momentum that wasn’t needed.
On a chilly, low-40s Friday night, JD Greeley set the tone for the Spartans. Greeley entered the game with an ERA north of 8! He gave Michigan State a season-high five scoreless innings against one of the Big Ten’s best offenses.
Greeley throws his fastball that averages 89.2mph, 58% of the time, and he supports it with a mid-to-high 70s breaker with the other 41% of his pitches. It was nothing UCLA probably hasn’t seen before, but he attacked hitters and only walked one.
That was the theme for the entire weekend. In most phases of the game of baseball, MSU was on the attack.
Michigan State has the league’s worst offense, but consistently had runners on base all weekend. The Spartans are among the Big Ten’s worst offenses, but they constantly had traffic on the basepaths throughout the weekend. In the first two games, MSU tallied eight free passes against UCLA starting pitching. Then they rocked Landon Stump for seven hits and six runs in 3.2 innings.
On the mound, MSU did a good job scattering UCLA’s hits (for the most part) and stacking zeros. UCLA scored all 21 of their runs in 5 total innings of the 24 frames they played.
Michigan State knew what was at stake this weekend because they’re on the Big Ten Tournament chopping block with Ohio State next week (and OSU was making noise and playing themselves off that bubble this week). The Spartans were pressing and played well enough to win any of the three games against UCLA, honestly.
On Sunday, during the 6th inning, I thought that the Bruins could seriously get run ruled. It felt like all the baseball that had been played below UCLA’s standard was going to come to a punctuation. That was until the Bruins flipped the switch.
The score was 7-2 going into the top of the seventh when Michigan State removed their starting pitcher. Carter Monke gave the Spartans six solid sets of three outs. Then MSU proceeded to hit a batter, walk the bases loaded, and then walk in a run, all without getting an out. Payton Brennan and Will Gasparino were able to get a couple of doubles to drop and the next thing you know, the score was 10-8.
Next, UCLA scored three runs on two hits and an error in the 8th to make it 11-11. Then, it was two runs scored on a Roch Cholowsky liner and a Mulivai Levu single to take a 13-11 lead in the 9th. Easton Hawk put the finishing touches on the series sweep with his third save in consecutive days.
“Yeah, it would be great… but right now we’re just going to focus on our Tuesday game, and then we’ll be ready for Oregon,” Mulivai Levu responded when asked what a perfect conference record means to this team.
Levu hit the game-winning moonshot of a home run on Friday night. UCLA’s first baseman went 5-for-12 during the weekend while also adding insurance in the 9th inning of Game 3.
“We’re really gritty,” Easton Hawk said about his offense that put him in position to get his third straight save. “We really stick with the 7-8-9, winning those three innings whether the game is going good or bad.”
Now I’m left thinking, maybe the punctuation happened when UCLA was staring right into the face of reality thinking, “we’re about to lose this perfect conference record via run rule defeat to… Michigan State.”
The perseverance in the 7/8/9th innings is what makes this team special. It’s a core group of players that went 19-33 as freshmen. Roch Cholowsky, the surefire #1 Overall pick, notched the go-ahead hit (misplayed by LF) and while standing on first base he showed TRUE emotion that we rarely get from him. It was evident, the pent-up energy that was being held inside the first base dugout all weekend spilled out after every moment during the final inning.
UCLA is currently facing the most adversity they have had all season. Logan Reddemann (2.87 ERA), their ace, has missed his last two turns in the rotation while “managing arm fatigue.” Wylan Moss (1.99 ERA) has stepped up in Reddemann’s absence.
“It feels good picking up Redd, you know at this time where he just needs some time off, and it’s nice getting to slot into the Friday night role. Getting back to starting is always nice,” said Moss. He tied a career-high by punching out 8 batters in a career-high 6.2 innings on Friday.
For 24 innings of the series, I saw a good team that, if they put all the pieces together, could host a regional. In those last three innings, a switch flipped. On a cold Sunday afternoon, those 711 people in East Lansing saw the front-runner to win the College World Series National Championship lock in and win the Big Ten Regular Season Title with two full weekends remaining.
This weekend, East Lansing crafted and set the best bear trap that they could find. Their end goal is to get to the Big Ten Conference Tournament at Omaha in late May. In order to make that possibility a lot easier, they knew they needed fur from the coat of the nation’s No. 1 team. The UCLA Bruins sleepwalked around the trees on the banks of the Red Cedar River for 24 total innings and still escaped with a regular season conference title and their perfect 24-0 B1G record intact.
The UCLA team that I watched for much of the weekend looked like a team that needed to taste their own blood (and maybe they still do).
In the back of my mind I’m thinking, “eh, cold road trip, sleepy environment. That’s typical college sports.” But I think if you ask anybody on that staff or roster, I think they’d say they haven’t played their best baseball during the Minnesota/Sac State/Michigan State weekends, including the midweek games in between.
In all three games, outfielders were constantly missing cutoffs and throws were getting away in the infield. UCLA was credited with 5 errors in the three games, but it honestly felt like more. The Bruins were giving Sparty extra momentum that wasn’t needed.
On a chilly, low-40s Friday night, JD Greeley set the tone for the Spartans. Greeley entered the game with an ERA north of 8! He gave Michigan State a season-high five scoreless innings against one of the Big Ten’s best offenses.
Greeley throws his fastball that averages 89.2mph, 58% of the time, and he supports it with a mid-to-high 70s breaker with the other 41% of his pitches. It was nothing UCLA probably hasn’t seen before, but he attacked hitters and only walked one.
That was the theme for the entire weekend. In most phases of the game of baseball, MSU was on the attack.
Michigan State has the league’s worst offense, but consistently had runners on base all weekend. The Spartans are among the Big Ten’s worst offenses, but they constantly had traffic on the basepaths throughout the weekend. In the first two games, MSU tallied eight free passes against UCLA starting pitching. Then they rocked Landon Stump for seven hits and six runs in 3.2 innings.
On the mound, MSU did a good job scattering UCLA’s hits (for the most part) and stacking zeros. UCLA scored all 21 of their runs in 5 total innings of the 24 frames they played.
Michigan State knew what was at stake this weekend because they’re on the Big Ten Tournament chopping block with Ohio State next week (and OSU was making noise and playing themselves off that bubble this week). The Spartans were pressing and played well enough to win any of the three games against UCLA, honestly.
On Sunday, during the 6th inning, I thought that the Bruins could seriously get run ruled. It felt like all the baseball that had been played below UCLA’s standard was going to come to a punctuation. That was until the Bruins flipped the switch.
The score was 7-2 going into the top of the seventh when Michigan State removed their starting pitcher. Carter Monke gave the Spartans six solid sets of three outs. Then MSU proceeded to hit a batter, walk the bases loaded, and then walk in a run, all without getting an out. Payton Brennan and Will Gasparino were able to get a couple of doubles to drop and the next thing you know, the score was 10-8.
Next, UCLA scored three runs on two hits and an error in the 8th to make it 11-11. Then, it was two runs scored on a Roch Cholowsky liner and a Mulivai Levu single to take a 13-11 lead in the 9th. Easton Hawk put the finishing touches on the series sweep with his third save in consecutive days.
“Yeah, it would be great… but right now we’re just going to focus on our Tuesday game, and then we’ll be ready for Oregon,” Mulivai Levu responded when asked what a perfect conference record means to this team.
Levu hit the game-winning moonshot of a home run on Friday night. UCLA’s first baseman went 5-for-12 during the weekend while also adding insurance in the 9th inning of Game 3.
“We’re really gritty,” Easton Hawk said about his offense that put him in position to get his third straight save. “We really stick with the 7-8-9, winning those three innings whether the game is going good or bad.”
Now I’m left thinking, maybe the punctuation happened when UCLA was staring right into the face of reality thinking, “we’re about to lose this perfect conference record via run rule defeat to… Michigan State.”
The perseverance in the 7/8/9th innings is what makes this team special. It’s a core group of players that went 19-33 as freshmen. Roch Cholowsky, the surefire #1 Overall pick, notched the go-ahead hit (misplayed by LF) and while standing on first base he showed TRUE emotion that we rarely get from him. It was evident, the pent-up energy that was being held inside the first base dugout all weekend spilled out after every moment during the final inning.
UCLA is currently facing the most adversity they have had all season. Logan Reddemann (2.87 ERA), their ace, has missed his last two turns in the rotation while “managing arm fatigue.” Wylan Moss (1.99 ERA) has stepped up in Reddemann’s absence.
“It feels good picking up Redd, you know at this time where he just needs some time off, and it’s nice getting to slot into the Friday night role. Getting back to starting is always nice,” said Moss. He tied a career-high by punching out 8 batters in a career-high 6.2 innings on Friday.
For 24 innings of the series, I saw a good team that, if they put all the pieces together, could host a regional. In those last three innings, a switch flipped. On a cold Sunday afternoon, those 711 people in East Lansing saw the front-runner to win the College World Series National Championship lock in and win the Big Ten Regular Season Title with two full weekends remaining.
