7-5 over Cal State Bakersfield. The Roadrunners are doing better this year than Riverside. Two consecutive wins-they have a streak going.
The hitting really started taking off since they entered conference play. Wonder if the Big West is down this year ? Fullerton has a losing record I think. Long Beach was swept by Sac State (which has a losing record now). UCI and UCSB are good, but UCSD is mediocre. We know the story with UCR. Bakersfield was actually 5-1 in conference before this game.
UC Davis scored nine runs in four of their losses against Irvine and UCSB, two of the better pitching staffs in the conference, and 13 runs in their other two losses at Irvine. It didn't help the Aggies build any consistency playing only on Tuesdays for three weeks after the St. Mary's series while everybody else was playing a regular schedule. Riverside has one of the worst pitching staffs in Big West history.
Nice win yesterday for the Aggies against Bakersfield, who went 5-1 against Riverside and Fullerton to start conference play.
The Big West conference RPI is 19th out of 31 conferences so the conference is down, although some of that RPI is due to UC Davis and Riverside being so bad along with Fullerton, UCSD and Bakersfield having RPI's well below 150.
The top part of the conference is decent with UCSB, Irvine and Cal Poly all having RPI's in the 60's. Northridge actually has the best RPI at 35 but they are going to have trouble being factors in the conference race sitting at 4-6, although their schedule was front loaded with the four best teams (those three listed earlier and Long Beach).