Repeat Won't Be Easy for Fullerton

Repeat Won’t Be Easy for Fullerton

By Eric Stephens

May 31, 2005 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

The challenge to repeat as a national champion is especially formidable in college basketball and football, but the feat is no less difficult to accomplish in college baseball.

Already entrenched among the sport’s elite, Cal State Fullerton has an opportunity for a rare achievement.

Only four schools can match the Titans’ four College World Series championships, but they can join another exclusive fraternity beginning Friday when they host one of the 16 NCAA regionals at Goodwin Field.

Since the tournament began in 1947, only Texas, USC, Stanford and Louisiana State have successfully defended their titles. The Titans have failed to make it back to Omaha after their three previous championships in 1979, 1984 and 1995, leaving the ultimate challenge to a team that’s been ranked in the top five almost all season.

“The big target is on your back, and we weathered the challenge pretty well,” Fullerton Coach George Horton said. “What I don’t like about that is the expectation part of it. We don’t have to do it, and maybe there are some out there that think we’re supposed to do it.

“This is an opportunity to do something that is unbelievably special and unbelievably difficult.”

Skip Bertman can relate. Before becoming LSU’s athletic director in 2001, he led the Tigers to five national championships in a 10-year span that included consecutive titles in 1996 and 1997.

Bertman said the biggest roadblocks that a championship team must face are the number of scholarships -- which are 11.7 for baseball -- and the effect of the major league draft, which often leads to turnover on a 35- to 40-player roster.

“Baseball is the poster sport for parity,” Bertman said. “It has the lowest amount of funded scholarships of any sport per capita compared to the revenue it produces and the amount of players on a team. That’s what make it so equal.”

Horton said another challenge is guarding against complacency, and he used a psychological move this season by ordering the public address announcer to remove any mention of the defending champions at home games.

The task ahead for Fullerton became that much more difficult with the announcement of the 64-team field Monday. The Titans, who won the Big West Conference, might have the toughest four-team regional of the first round.

Arizona (37-19) was in line for one of the eight national seedings and pulled its bid to host only because of expected low ticket sales. Missouri (39-20) spent most of the season in the national polls and has one of the nation’s top pitchers in sophomore Max Scherzer. Harvard (29-15), the Titans’ opponent on Friday, is the Ivy League champion and has three starting pitchers with a combined 17-2 record.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that we’re the only bracket that has three top 15 teams,” Horton said. “Missouri has got to be the best No. 3 seed in the country. Arizona has been in the top 10 for the last three months.”

Another apparent slight by the NCAA selection committee is the placing of Fullerton as a sixth-seeded team nationally even though it jockeyed with Tulane for the No. 1 ranking most of the season in three major polls.

The Titans won two of three games at Tulane, but the Green Wave, with a 50-9 record, is the tournament’s top-seeded team overall.

Charlie Carr, the committee’s chairman, said, “Both of those teams are good teams. Our decision was that Tulane was a little bit better over the long haul.”

“I don’t understand why we slid down,” Horton said. “We’ve been in the top five basically the entire year, we played all the big boys and we’ve won our series.”

Long Beach State (36-20) will have a distinct local flavor to its regional; USC (37-19) and Pepperdine (38-21) were sent to play each other at Blair Field this weekend. The 49ers will play Atlantic 10 Conference champion Rhode Island (34-19).

A notable omission among the field is Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, which did not get an at-large berth despite a 36-20 record and a tie for second place in the Big West with Long Beach. At least three Big West teams have made the field the last four years.

“The players are devastated,” Cal Poly Coach Larry Lee said. “We thought we did everything necessary through the course of the year to obtain a regional berth.”

Horton called the Mustangs’ exclusion a “travesty.”

“Hey, we have the chance to defend our title,” he said. “Larry got the field taken right out from under him.”

* COMPLETE SCHEDULE, D7