News and announcements

Point Loma Nazarene University is hosting a first-round regional playoff for the NCAA Div. II baseball tournament this week, with games Thursday-Saturday.

Also in the three-team double-elimination draw are Cal State San Marcos, just up the freeway from PLNU, as well as Cal Poly Pomona from Los Angeles County.

PLNU finished 40-10-1 on the season, including 25-6-1 in PacWest Conference play. PLNU not only won the regular season title, but then prevailed in the conference tournament to earn the Pac West’s automatic NCAA bid.

Cal State San Marcos and Cal Poly Pomona both play in the California Collegiate Athletic Association, which was won by Cal State Monterey Bay. CSUSM finished second, with a conference record of 26-13 (27-19 overall). Cal Poly Pomona went 25-15 in CCAA play (31-22 overall).

The draw gets underway at 2 p.m. Thursday when Cal Poly Pomona faces CSUSM. PLNU will play the loser of that game at 5 p.m. Thursday. Friday feature one game, at 5 p.m., based on results from Thursday’s games, and the series will wrap up Saturday – with a doubleheader if necessary.

The winner will go on to the NCAA Div. II Super Regionals.

Tickets can be purchased at https://plnusealions.universitytickets.com/

Hope International University, the Orange County school that competes in the Golden State Athletic Conference, is headed to Fayette, Missouri, on Monday, May 13 for the first round of the NAIA playoffs. Their first game will be against Northwestern Ohio.

HIU finished the 2024 regular season with a record of 37-14, including a stellar 19-4 conference campaign that gave them the regular season crown. However, they lost to Jessup in the championship final, giving their Northern California rivals the conference’s automatic bid to the NAIA postseason. But the selection committee rewarded HIU for an outstanding season with an at-large bid.

Subsequent games will be based on how HIU does against Northwestern Ohio in the opener.

There were a few rainouts today across Southern California due to the scattered (but often heavy) showers; check the schedule of any game you were planning to attend. Some were pushed from Saturday to Sunday, but call ahead as the storm is forecast to linger.

University of San Diego and Saint Mary’s College will play the game originally scheduled for Sunday, March 24 at 4:30 p.m. March 23 to try to avoid another Southern California rainstorm. Ticket exchange information is available at the USD website.

With another storm set to hit Southern California this weekend, the University of San Diego announced that it’s three-game series against St. Mary’s will be condensed into two days. There will be a single-admission double-header on Friday, March 22, and the third game played on Saturday – although an earlier start time has not yet been finalized.

When Saturday’s start time is set, it will be posted to USD’s baseball site.

The California Pacific Conference announced last week that the University of Antelope Valley has dropped its baseball and softball programs effective immediately, with remaining games in their 2024 seasons cancelled. the conference announced that the two conference series UAV had already played will be counted as non-conference games in the season standings.

Shortly after that, the university itself announced it was shutting down completely – with March 6 the last day of operations.

UAV had started baseball play in 2015, and in that tie had won six conference championships – playing in the NAIA College World Series in 2018.

The school was founded in 1997 as a medical careers college, later expanding its degree offerings.

In a near-repeat of the 2023 season, 2024 opened wet and stormy, with nearly every school in Southern California having to cancel or postpone multiple games.

Point Loma Nazarene suffered the most, as a sinkhole made their home field unplayable for several weeks. They are scheduled to return to action on their home field this Friday, March 1, vs. Westmont.

SoCal Baseball continues to play a bit of catch-up trying to adjust to all the rescheduled games. We should be fully up to date by this weekend.

See you in the bleachers!

Finished off UC San Diego and UC Riverside, and all of our NCAA Division I schools are now in the calendar for 2024! We are busy grinding away trying to get caught up with the rest of Div. II and Div. III, plus NAIA. It’s a bit hodge-podge in the lower divisions right now as we posted the schedules that were released first – and there were a lot more late to the party schedules than we anticipated.

We’ll start updating results this weekend, and by next week should be completely caught up.

In the meantime, what are you waiting for – go catch a game!

After last year’s inaugural season of providing calendars and scores for collegiate baseball in San Diego and Orange Counties. this year we’ve expanded into Los Angeles, Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Bernardino and Riverside Counties!

As some schools were still releasing their schedules as of last week, we’re a bit further behind than we’d like to be – particularly with some NAIA schools having already started their 2024 season!

We are working overtime to get caught up, and you can now see the 2024 schedules of the following schools:

• Cal State Fullerton
• Cal State Northridge
• Long Beach State
• San Diego State
• UC Irvine
• UCLA
• UC Riverside
• USC
• USD
• Loyola Marymount
• Pepperdine
• Point Loma Nazarene
• Cal Baptist
• Biola
• Chapman
• Westmont

Keep checking back – we’ll have the rest posted soon!