Baseball opens playoffs at San Bernardino Valley

The Saddleback baseball program found out it qualified for the Southern California playoffs on Sunday and will open a best-of-three series at San Bernardino Valley College on Friday.  The Gauchos were one of seven Orange Empire Conference programs to make the field and garnered the No. 11 seed.

Saddleback and San Bernardino Valley have met a total of 36 times in history, with both teams winning 18 times.  In addition, both teams have identical 23-13 records in 2015 which is why it is being billed as a tight series that could go either way. 

(11) Saddleback finished in a tie for fourth place in the Orange Empire Conference with Irvine Valley and Fullerton and won eight of its last 11 games.  The Gauchos played eight straight games against playoff programs to finish the season, going 5-3 against No. 18-seed Riverside, No. 12-seed Fullerton, No. 17-seed Irvine Valley and No. 10-seed Orange Coast.   Cypress garnered the top seed from the conference at No. 3 while Golden West was the No. 4 seed.  The OEC was rewarded as a result of going 84-35 (.706) against non-conference opponents during the course of the 2015 campaign.

(6) San Bernardino Valley was the champions of the Foothill Conference, finishing 19-5 in conference play.  The Wolverines played just one game against Orange Empire competition during the season, losing to Cypress 2-0 on February 5. San Bernardino Valley had a woeful start to the season, opening 2-8 before righting the ship.  The Wolverines were 2-5 against other programs that made the playoffs and 0-4 against out-of-conference programs in the post-season.

Saddleback and San Bernardino Valley will open on Friday at SBVC.  The first pitch is tentatively scheduled for 2:00 PM.  Game two is scheduled for Saturday at 11:00 AM with a third game to follow, if necessary. 

Southern California Regional Bracket