College World Series

UC Irvine, with the benefit of an NCAA championship in men's volleyball and a third-place showing by the baseball team at the College World Series, earned its best finish ever in the U.S. Sports Academy Directors' Cup standings at 56th. The Directors' Cup is compiled annually by the Collegiate Directors of Athletics, United States Sports Academy and USA Today to rank the best overall collegiate athletics programs among the country's 285 Division I schools. That means the Anteaters were among the top 20% nationally, in terms of success program wide.

UC Irvine is ranked No. 22 in the USA Today/ESPN Top 25 preseason baseball poll released Friday. The Anteaters finished 47-17-1 last season, when they finished third at the College World Series in the program’s first trip to Omaha. UCI finished second in the Big West with a 15-6 mark, won the Round Rock (Texas) Regional and the Wichita Super Regional to advance to the CWS. The ’Eaters became the first team to post consecutive extra-inning wins at the CWS, ousting Cal State Fullerton, 5-4, in a CWS-record 5 hours, 40 minutes (13 innings)

Mike Mayne, the Orange Coast College baseball coach from 1977-92, proved to be a bit prophetic with a statement he made before the College World Series began. “... We’re playing pretty doggone good right now and I think we can do some damage here [in Omaha],” Mayne, Fresno State’s pitching coach, told the Daily Pilot in a story published June 15, the day the Bulldogs began their improbable CWS run. “If we win that first game, watch out.” Mayne and Fresno State won that first game and did plenty of damage, becoming the lowest seed to win an NCAA championship on Wednesday night.

Massachusetts native Bob Macaluso was just 3 years old when the Red Sox came from the lower division of the American League to win the pennant and reach the 1967 World Series, a season known forever to Boston fans as the Impossible Dream. Decades later, Macaluso spends his summers in the Northeast living his dream, as a perennial participant in the prestigious Cape Cod summer baseball league. Macaluso, 44, a first-year volunteer assistant last season at UC Irvine, is in his sixth season as manager of the Brewster Whitecaps, who are battling for one of two playoff berths in the five-team Eastern Division with the regular season ending Thursday.

UC Irvine baseball coach Mike Gillespie will be inducted into the American Baseball Coaches Assn. Hall of Fame Friday at the ABCA Hall of Fame/Coach of the Year banquet in Dallas, Texas. Gillespie, who took over the reins at UCI in the fall of 2007, has had a storied career. He ranks No. 24 in victories among active coaches at the Division I level with a an 850-504-2 record. He has a .627 winning percentage. In 2009 Gillespie was named Big West Conference Coach of the Year after the program claimed its first conference title with a 22-2 mark, the second-best winning percentage in conference history at .917.

Ted Silva, a former Cal State Fullerton All-American, has been chosen by UC Irvine baseball coach Mike Gillespie to become the Anteaters’ pitching coach. Silva was the pitching coach at Fresno State last season, after spending two seasons as volunteer assistant and pitching coach at Cal State Fullerton in 2005-06. Silva becomes the second full-time assistant for Gillespie, the former USC coach who was hired to fill the void created when Dave Serrano left to become coach at Cal State Fullerton.

WICHITA, Kan. — UC Irvine sophomore ace Scott Gorgen will try to move the Anteaters one win from the College World Series when he takes the mound in Game 1 of the best-of-three baseball Super Regional today at 9 a.m. at Wichita State. Gorgen has allowed one run and 12 hits in his last 27 innings, spanning three straight complete-game wins. UCI (43-15-1), ranked No. 4 in the nation and having won 13 of 15 three-game series in the regular season before sweeping three games in an NCAA Regional last week in Texas, is trying to earn its first trip to the eight-team College World Series, June 15-25, in Omaha, Neb. Coach Dave Serrano's Anteaters have won four straight and 12 of their last 13. The Anteaters, who had eight players drafted Thursday and Friday in the Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft, are hitting .323 as a team and boast a 3.81 earned-run average.

Two months after announcing his resignation as UC Irvine athletic director because of his father's death in May and the athletic program's thinning financial resources, Bob Chichester might find himself at a smaller school soon. Chichester is one of four finalists for the athletic director job at Eastern Washington University, which has an enrollment above 10,000 students, about 15,000 less than UCI, and is located in Cheney, Wash. Under Chichester, UCI's first African-American athletic director, the Anteaters prospered in his fifth and final year.

Another big-time college baseball coach opening, another gig turned down. That was the case for UC Irvine’s Dave Serrano, who was quick to squash speculation that he would be interested in the Cal State Fullerton head position with the Titans’ George Horton accepting the Oregon job. Serrano, who guided UCI to its first appearance in the College World Series last year, was Fullerton’s pitching coach for eight years prior...

OMAHA, Neb. — In a game without precedent in the 61-year history of the College World Series, it was déjà vu that helped UC Irvine extend its baseball season with a 5-4 victory over Cal State Fullerton in an elimination game Monday at Rosenblatt Stadium. Junior right fielder Bryan Petersen, who doubled in the game-winning run in the bottom of the ninth June 10 to clinch the super regional at Wichita State and propel the Anteaters to their first appearance in the College World Series, lined a walk-off single to center to cap the 13-inning marathon that lasted a record five hours, 40 minutes.