UCLA Baseball Coach Details Where They'll Improve Next Season

Despite leaping to the No. 15 seed in the postseason and making a dominant run to the College World Series before being ousted by No. 3 ranked Arkansas, UCLA baseball is far from reaching its peak.

The Bruins took one of the biggest season-to-season leaps in college baseball this season, going from winning 19 games in 2024 to winning 48 and going 6-2 in the postseason, making their first trip to Omaha since 2013, whnen they won the national championship.

One thing that stands out about UCLA becoming one of the best teams in the nation is that it's also one of the youngest. Most of the Bruins' core are sophomores, led by projected No. 1 pick in the 2026 MLB Draft Roch Cholowsky.

UCLA started the postseason 6-0, sweeping through the regional rounds and defeating Murray State in its Omaha opener. The Bruins then had to play LSU over the span of two days after the game was suspended after three innings due to inclement weather and moved to the next morning, which was also the same day as their elimination game against Arkansas, which they lost 7-3.

Through the highs of the season and the scars they got along the way, coach John Savage still believes there's a ton of room for imporvement.

"You've got to evaluate everything," Savage said of where the team can improve ahead of next season, noting a list of things that include roster construction, the transfer portal, the draft and high school prospects among other things. "There's just so much that makes a program. Strength. That's the one thing that I would say that I walked away from this thing is, we got to get a lot stronger physically.

"Some of these guys are 23 and some of us are 18. That, alone in itself, makes a difference. But, at the same time, we got to get stronger physically."

UCLA's offense was on a roll for most of the beginning of the postseason and the bullpen was strong all season. Starting pitching is one of the areas Savage believes can be improved.

"I think our starting pitching has to get better, clearly," he said. "We've had really good starting pitching, but we have to make sure we have a couple frontline ones and twos that will carry the freight over the weekend. Several guys have a chance to be those guys.

"So there's a slot of things that you gotta still look at and say, 'you know what? we've got to get better in those areas.' And I love doing that. That's part of my job and certainly we're going to be looking at a lot of different things."

The Bruins have one of the highest upsides of any program in college baseball and Savage is eager to get back to Omaha next year.