The No. 3 seed Loyola Marymount Lions baseball team had difficulty getting their bats going against freshman righthander Nick Nastrini and fell to No. 1 seed UCLA 6-1 forcing a winner-take-all game tomorrow night at Jackie Robinson Stadium for the right to advance to the NCAA Super Regionals.
 
Monday night's Regional Final between LMU and UCLA will begin at 7:00 p.m. (PT) and be televised on ESPN2. The winner of Monday's game will then play next weekend against either Michigan or Creighton in a best-of-three series in the Supers.
 
The loss was the Lions first of the Regionals, ending a streak of five-straight postseason wins. The first three coming in the West Coast Conference tournament followed by a pair of victories over the top two seeds in the Los Angeles Regional. 
 
Sophomore lefthander Matt Voelker (2-5) drew the Sunday start for the Lions and wound up on the losing end but got nothing but praise from his head coach.
 
"I was proud of our pitcher (Matt) Voelker, who does what we do," said head coach Jason Gill. "He threw strikes. I think we walked one guy in nine innings. Anytime we do what we set out to do, which is throw strikes and play defense behind them, then I'm proud of my guys. He wasn't scared. He went right after them and they did a heck of a job, barreling up some baseballs that left the yard."
 
LMU fell victim to the long ball, surrendering three home runs to the Bruin offense which led to five of the six runs UCLA scored on the night. 
 
LMU found themselves down five when they put together a rally in the bottom half of the fifth. The Lions loaded the bases with one out before Nick Sogard lifted a sacrifice fly to left field, allowing Ethan Patrick to score. Next up was Kenny Oyama but he couldn't push anymore LMU runs across as he struck out with two runners on base. 
 
With the Lions down by four Gill called on the bullpen to stall UCLA's offense and they limited them to one run in 5 2/3 innings. Freshman Alexander Burge's 4.1 innings of work kept the Lions within striking distance of the Bruins.
 
"Freshman Alex Burge comes in there and shuts their offense down, which I thought was extremely impressive. We get to look forward to that for a couple more years, which is nice," said Gill.
 
The Lions offense put pressure on the Bruins in the bottom half of the eighth when there first two batters got aboard with walks against Holden Powell. 
 
"I was excited that our offense got their closer out there in the eighth inning and had to go two innings and some of our hitters got a look at him. If he comes into the game tomorrow, we'll have some guys that have seen him," said Gill.
 
The eighth inning rally stalled after the next three LMU batters went down in order ending the threat.
 
The Lions were retired in order in the bottom of the ninth ending the game in UCLA's favor but Gill is optimistic on his team's chances heading into tomorrow's Regional Final.
 
"I am proud of my team. They played hard. Baseball happened today," said Gill.