Football
On today’s episode of the UCLA Bruins Insider Podcast, we talk about football landing two more recruits for the class of 2026 and baseball’s rain-game suspension on Monday.
Following their win against Murray State on Saturday, coach John Savage spoke to the media about the game and looking forward to their matchup against the LSU Tigers. Below is a transcription of the media availability courtesy of UCLA Athletics:
Q. You said it was a big team effort, but it felt like your No. 9 hitter, in all phases of the game, was electric tonight. Phoenix Call—the two plays early on defensively, the sac bunt, going first to third right in the face of the left fielder in the fourth inning—sparked things before that. Could you talk a little bit about Phoenix’s impact overall and how he’s such a spark plug for the whole team today?
JOHN SAVAGE: Phoenix is a phenomenal athlete. He’s a high school shortstop who can play center field with anybody, probably in the tournament. You can see him move—we’ve seen him move as the season goes along here. He’s getting more confident, more familiar with the position. He’s never played second in his life; he played short his whole young career, and then center field, because he can really move and run. He’s not your typical second baseman, I guess, in some ways, but he’s a dynamic player, and we have him in the 9-hole. He’s almost like a lead-off guy in many ways. He can swing the bat. He had a really good Cape Cod last summer and really grew up last year at YD, and that’s really carried over to this season. Most of his errors were really early in the year. He’s been phenomenal, really, from about early April on. He can run, he can bunt, he sprays the ball all over the ballpark, and he does have a little power at times. So he’s coming into his own. He’s still a very young player, but he’s an elite player.
Q. You mentioned in your opening statement, you phrased it as you pitched out of plenty of problems today. Barnett’s four walks in 4.1 was the most this season. I was very impressed with the pitching staff in general being able to pitch out of so many jams today. And then you look at the Super Regional as well—the final 16 innings of that series, zero runs. Could you talk about the strength of the pitching staff lately?
JOHN SAVAGE: We finally got to know ourselves probably about April on, middle of April. We’re not going to blow anybody away—clearly, you can tell that. Hawk can do that a little bit, and a couple of relievers can do that, but we’ve got to pitch. It was pretty unusual for Mike to walk four guys—that’s very unusual for Mike. I think the first five hitters were 3–2 counts. It was like, “Oh boy,” 28 pitches in the first inning. It wasn’t quite like Mike. But they all have a little niche. They all know what they can do. I have a good feel for them in terms of pitch calling. It’s a blend—it’s a change, it’s a breaking ball, it’s a slider, it’s a cutter, it’s a fastball. It’s not just one go-to pitch. A lot of these guys are somewhat starters that are relievers. Some guys are three- and four-pitch guys—even if it’s one inning, some guys are throwing four pitches, which is a little unusual nowadays. Usually, you see two pitches out of a reliever. So we do have some guys that really have starter profiles, but not big stuff. That’s why we can get into trouble a little bit, because they can get hit. O’Connor got in trouble. Moss got in trouble. Souza got in trouble. Really the only one who didn’t get in trouble was Hawk. It’s baseball. It’s Omaha. You expect trouble. If you’re not expecting trouble, you’ll be out of here pretty quick. So you better be able to pitch with traffic and pitch out of problems. That’s the nature of championship baseball.
Q. I was wondering if you could give any insight into what the starting pitching might look like later in the week, given that both Moss and May threw today?
JOHN SAVAGE: It’s a tournament, so you don’t label your rotation in a tournament. You kind of look at matchups, and you look at video, and you determine what happened the day before. We still certainly have Stump available. Stump is ready to go. But we’ll have to see and look at it tonight and make a decision more likely. We’ve got to see who wins tonight’s game, too. It’s tournament time; you go day by day.
Q. You have a really young lineup. A lot of people see that as a disadvantage. How do you see that as an advantage?
JOHN SAVAGE: Got good, young players. We’ve got to keep them. We’ve got to hold on to them. Gotta keep on retaining them. They’re very good players. We wore it last year—we clearly did. We did not win many games last year. I didn’t think we were going to win as few as we did. But at the end of the day, it’s paid off. We played a lot of guys that probably weren’t quite ready—Dean West did not play very much last year. He was hurt. Dean played the last weekend of the year; I think he got on base 11 times against Stanford. He has one of the best hand-eye coordinations in the country, best zone discipline in the country. Phenomenal player. He didn’t play very much last year because of injury. V played a lot. Roch played a lot. Roman played quite a bit. Phoenix played a little bit. Cash played quite a bit. We’re kind of getting the payoff now, clearly. And I don’t like to say that we’re young. I said this in the press conference a couple of days ago: A lot of these guys have played over 100 Division I games—115 Division I games. You can’t play the young card too much. I think that’s a mistake. Good, young players that are coming into their own—you can talk about that. But you see a lot of sophomores. I’m sure you guys saw that little thing that went out—we have 37 kind of homegrown players that we recruited. So right now, it’s a pretty good formula. Last year, it wasn’t a great formula. So it evolves, and anything good takes time.
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