Arizona State Baseball Falls in Tournament Game vs UCLA

The Arizona State Sun Devils (36-23) dropped game number two of their NCAA tournament run on Saturday night to the 15th national seed UCLA Bruins (44-16) by a score of 11-5.

The game started well enough for Willie Bloomquist's squad - as the game was tied at zero one inning in.

Then things began to unravel.

The Bruins put forth an incredible seven run effort in the second inning, including a grand slam by Roman Martin to truly break the game open.

Arizona State responded with a run in the bottom of the inning, but UCLA continued on onslaught for much of the remainder of the night.

The Bruins went into the ninth inning ahead 11-3 - two late Sun Devil runs just made the score appear closer than the game truly ended up being, as the Sun Devils' 5.27 team ERA going into the tournament reared itself after largely holding up on Friday night against UC Irvine.

Now, Arizona State must win two games tomorrow to receive a chance to advance to the Super Regionals - first, they must defeat UC Irvine again in a game that is scheduled to be played at 3 P.M. Arizona time this afternoon, then they must defeat the Bruins in a 7 P.M. contest to push a potential winner-takes-all contest on Monday.

It's certainly a tall task for the Sun Devils - but the belief that they can still make a run remains.

Per Jake Sloan of SunDevilSource:

"I give the credit to my coaches, My coaches are the ones who have developed these young men and continue to grind with them, but I also give credit to my players. They're the ones that buy into what we're selling. They believe in themselves as well as the coaches and what we're doing."

This is from Bloomquist himself after the victory on Friday - and his praise surrounding a roster that has largely been homegrown over his four year long tenure as head coach of the program.

Arizona State's season hangs in the balance - they must win three consecutive games to salvage the season - the belief they can ultimately get the job done still exists.

Read more about the program - including takeaways from the game one victory here, and the true ceiling of the very talented team here.

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