Arkansas will send Root to the mound vs. UCLA in Tuesday night’s CWS clash

BY DUDLEY E. DAWSON

For the first time all season, UCLA will play two games in a one day and will be facing an Arkansas pitcher making his second start in three College World Series games.

The Razorbacks (49-14) will send left-hander Zach Root (8-6, 3.82 ERA) to the mound against the Bruins (48-17) in an elimination game scheduled for 6 p.m. at Omaha’s Charles Schwab Field.

LSU downed UCLA 9-5 in a winners’ bracket game that started Monday night and finished up Tuesday morning after a weather delay.

“I thought they were the better team today,” UCLA head coach John Savage said of LSU. “So we’ve got to regroup and focus on Arkansas now.”

Savage noted his team has not played a double header all season, but really has no choice on Tuesday night.

“Yeah, we haven’t played a double-header,” Savage said. “That is surprising in some ways. We don’t deal with weather in LA much obviously in the west certainly in that league. We dodged it.

“…But it’s the World Series. You’ve got to deal with anything that comes your way. If you have to play a doubleheader you have to play a doubleheader. If you feel sorry for yourself, you’re not going to be playing very long.”

UCLA arrived back at Charles Schwab Field at around 4:30 p.m.

“It’s the nature of the game. We’ll be ready to go tonight,” Savage said. “It’s not a doubleheader back-to-back, right? You’ve got to sit for a game.

“It’s not the (ideal) schedule. No one planned it like this. We have to deal with it. We’ll be fine. We’re big boys.”

UCLA used nine pitchers in its game with LSU.

“When you’re in the winners’ bracket, you’ve got to do everything you can to stay in the winners’ bracket,” Savage said. “Anybody who tells you otherwise doesn’t know what they’re talking about or has never coached.

“But I think we have some guys, clearly. We have about five or six guys that didn’t throw either yesterday or today. We’ll pick one, we’ll pick some guys out of that lot.

“You always feel, can a guy come back? Morning and night? The World Series is not designed for that. This isn’t designed for that. They didn’t ask for this. We have to deal with it. We’re the team that has to deal with it.

“That’s okay. A lot of them threw 10, 12, 14 pitches. Most of those guys should be able to come back. But we do have still, a pretty big group of guys that haven’t thrown.

Arkansas, which lost to LSU 4-1 on Saturday in its CWS opener, rode Gage Wood’s no hitter to a 3-0 win over Murray State on Monday night to advance to Tuesday’s night game.

The winner of Tuesday night’s Arkansas-UCLA game would have to beat LSU on both Wednesday and Thursday to advance to Saturday’s best 2-of-3 championship series.

Root started the LSU game, but lasted just 38 pitches before being pulled in favor of Gabe Gaeckle with one out in the second inning.

He allowed three runs on two hits, two walks and a hit batter.

Root has pitched 14 2/3 innings in the NCAA Tournament while allowing four runs, striking out 15 and walking five.

Photo by John D. James