By Jeff Agase
Daily Bruin Staff
Florida Atlantic ““ it’s not exactly Stanford or USC,
but head coach Gary Adams and the UCLA baseball team will take
it.
The Bruins (2-2) and Blue Wave (1-2) open a three game set
tonight at 5 p.m. at Jackie Robinson Stadium.
FAU has been one of the Atlantic Sun Conference’s best
teams in recent years, even if most casual college baseball fans
equate the name with 14 and 15 seeds in the NCAA basketball
tournament.
“Whenever you play a team from Florida, you know
they’re going to be good, and you know they’ll know how
to play ball,” Adams said.
And in contrast to Gonzaga, UCLA’s opponent last weekend,
FAU’s strengths lie in pitching.
 EDWARD LIN/Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Senior catcher Josh Arhart and the rest of the UCLA baseball
team will be tested by FAU.
“We have four young guys who pitched last year as
freshmen, talented guys who pitched well in the fall,” FAU
head coach Kevin Cooney said. “But then again, it was against
our own hitters, so you never know.”
Junior Kevin Core anchors a rotation that struggled last weekend
against Bethune Cookman but should be one of the best in conference
““ then again, the conference is the Atlantic Sun.
“Core’s not a hard-throwing guy but he is a good
pitcher,” Adams said. “He’s an established
pitcher, but he’s still not a USC- or Stanford-type
arm.”
The Bruins feasted on weak Gonzaga pitching to win the
season’s first series, scoring 27 runs in three games. The
hitting was there all weekend, but the team’s pitching was
spotty at times, particularly in a six-run fourth inning in the
second game.
“There was good and bad, but mostly good,” Adams
said. “I felt our pitching broke down in the second game of
the series.
“If you put together all three games, though, we soured in
only one inning.”
The Pac-10 season is still far off, and with the Bruins picked
to finish second to last in the conference, they’ll need to
use these non-conference series to get a taste of every possible
kind of opponent.
“It’s another good test for this team,” Adams
said. “I’m glad they are a different kind of team than
we’ve played so far.”