UCI won’t host regional

RIVERSIDE — UC Irvine’s bid to host one of 16 NCAA baseball regionals was denied Sunday by an NCAA committee that announced the 16 bids.

Long Beach State, which finished tied for second place in the Big West Conference, claimed what many speculated would be the third of three bids to host regionals in the West.

The University of San Diego, which will host a regional at San Diego State, and Arizona State were the other West regional sites.

UCI Coach Dave Serrano, who had spoken confidently about his school’s chances to host what would have been the program’s first regional at Anteater Ballpark, learned moments before Sunday’s regular-season-ending win at UC Riverside, that the Anteaters had played their final home game this season.

UCI defeated the Big West champion, 16-8, Sunday.

“I was surprised, but not stunned,” Serrano said. “I have no idea where we’re going to go. It doesn’t really matter.”

Serrano speculated that UCI’s limited seating may have been one reason for not getting the bid.

Anteater Ballpark has just fewer than 1,000 permanent seats, though seating on a grassy berm that extends from behind the first-base dugout to the right-field fence allows school officials to list capacity at 3,200.

Blair Field, where Long Beach State plays its home games, is a 3,000-seat facility that has hosted a regional as recently as 2005.

UCI senior second baseman Cody Cipriano said the slight will motivate the team to do well, wherever it competes in the regionals, for which pairings will be announced today at 9:30 a.m. on ESPN.

“Losing the regional bid hurts, but I think we’ve got that little chip back on our shoulder,” Cipriano said. “We were feeling pretty good about ourselves there for a while, but now we got that chip back.”

Cipriano said he and his teammates will be ready to play, regardless of which regional they will compete in.

“It doesn’t matter to me,” he said. “If they ship us, we can play pretty well on the road, too. I’d love to go anywhere; maybe bring our brand of baseball to those big conference schools and take our kind of game to that level.”

Serrano said he was also confident his team could fare well regardless of the site.

“My preference was Anteater Ballpark, but that was taken away by a committee,” Serrano said. “Wherever they send us, we’ll get on a bus or a plane and we’ll play Anteater baseball.”

Other regional hosts include: Arkansas, Coastal Carolina, Florida State, Missouri, North Carolina, Mississippi, Rice, South Carolina, Texas, Texas A&M;, Vanderbilt, Virginia and Wichita State.

BARRY FAULKNER may be reached at (714) 966-4615 or at [email protected].