The U.C. San Diego baseball team has built one of the best programs in the nation. They’ve been to the Division II College World Series each of the last two years.
The Tritons have been very good in the California Collegiate Athletic Association Tournament, winning it seven times (including 2018). But they hadn’t won the CCAA regular season title since 2012.
That changed this weekend.
The 5th-ranked Tritons clinched the conference title with a 4-game sweep at Cal State East Bay and head to Stockton this week for the conference tourney as the #1 seed. The Tritons are also in the driver’s seat to host the NCAA Tournament Regional next week, and since they know they’re already in the dance they don’t need to stress out too much about getting the automatic bid that comes with winning the conference tourney.
But that doesn’t mean they’re not gonna try.
“We’ve put ourselves in a position where the weekend after is now in play,” said Tritons head coach Eric Newman. “We don’t HAVE to win the conference tournament to get into a regional. We’re going to set ourselves up in the conference tournament to win it but at the same time make sure our pitching is lined up, make sure we’re getting guys at-bats, make sure we’re covering the things we need to cover to put ourselves in position for the week after, also.”
The Tritons open the six-team, four-day, double elimination CCAA Tournament on Wednesday morning at 11:00 a.m. against the 6th-seed Cal Poly Pomona. Unless something incredibly unexpected happens U.C. San Diego will host the NCAA Regional the weekend of May 16-18.
