The No. 1 overall seed UCLA baseball team was stunningly eliminated from its home Los Angeles Regional with a 6-5 10-inning loss to Saint Mary’s on Sunday.
It was the second loss to the Gaels (36-26) in three days for the Bruins (52-8), a wire-to-wire top-ranked team this season, who lost six games all regular season and didn’t drop a single weekend series.
UCLA, which lost 3-2 to Saint Mary’s on Friday and rallied with two ninth-inning homers to stay alive with a 6-5 win over Virginia Tech on Saturday, entered the day having won 78 straight games it led after eight innings.
The Bruins were one out away from staying alive again and advancing into the regional final against Cal Poly. But Saint Mary’s Ian Armstrong chopped a ball over first baseman Mulivai Levu’s head into right field, scoring Tanner Griffith to level the game at 5.
After UCLA escaped a bases-loaded jam to send the game into extras, the Bruins came up empty in the top of the 10th. Makoa Sniffen delivered the game-winning single to left, scoring Cody Kashimoto from second.
Cal Poly beat Saint Mary’s 5-2 later on Sunday to win the regional.
The Bruins were the first No. 1 overall seed in this current format (since 1999) to lose their regional opener. They’re the fifth top seed to fail to make it out of their regional and just the second to not even reach the regional final, joining the 2025 Vanderbilt squad.
While it’s not normally this drastic, there’s plenty of evidence of a potential curse for the top-seeded team. The No. 1 overall seed has won the championship just twice in this current format, Miami in 1999 and Tennessee in 2024.
UCLA was not the only host that failed to survive the weekend. No. 9 Southern Miss was eliminated Saturday after losing its first two games, and No. 13 Nebraska was eliminated Sunday after a pair of losses to Ole Miss and Arizona State.
No. 2 Georgia Tech, No. 8 Florida, No. 10 Florida State (needs two wins), No. 12 Texas A&M and No. 16 West Virginia will face elimination Monday in winner-take-all regional finals after each losing one of their first three games of the regional.
No. 4 Auburn, which dropped its opening game to Milwaukee on Friday, won the next two games and forced a rematch with Milwaukee late Sunday night, needing to win that game and another on Monday to advance.
No. 3 Georgia, No. 5 North Carolina, No. 6 Texas, No. 7 Alabama, No. 11 Oregon, No. 14 Mississippi State and No. 15 Kansas all swept through their home regionals to advance to the super regional round.
–Field Level Media
