This weekend sort of shapes up as a tale of two cities. Well, one city (Long Beach) and one empire (the Inland Empire). The empire belongs to the University of California Riverside and of late the empire has been the more successful territory. UCR baseball has wins in four of its last five games while the lads from the LBC have dropped three of four. The Beach has struggled offensively since a 20-run April Fool’s Day outburst at Pacific appeared to crash their karma.
 
Since that time, Long Beach has scored just 21 runs over seven games. Skipper Troy Buckley has gone back to his drawing board (“maybe we should just do that Yahtzee thing, put all the names in a bag and draw nine out.” With both the Highlanders and the Dirtbags tucked well behind CSUF and UCI, the series is important. LBSU’s weekend rotation is tentatively scheduled to consist of Andrew Gagnon (4-4, 2.55), Shawn Stuart (2-2, 3.16) and Ryan Strufing (2-0, 3.86). Brandon Pinder, who was the No. 2 guy all season, will next appear someplace else. The Highlanders earned a 6-5 victory over UNLV on Tuesday in that game in which the Rebel pitcher took a batted ball in his face. Their normal Friday starter Matt Andriese (1-3, 3.30) was credited with a win—the first of his season. On Saturday, Dustin Emmons (3-1, 4.50) will get the start as Matt Larkins rests an injured forearm. Trevor Frank (1-1, 3.12) rounds out the UC Riverside rotation throwing on Sunday.

While LBSU won two of three over UOP, UC Riverside notched two 10-plus run victories to improve to 3-3 in conference play. The Highlanders opened the series with a 14-1 victory and followed that up with a 13-5 win in Saturday’s matinee. This marked the first time UC Riverside had back-to-back 10-plus run performances since games against Air Force, 19-7, and Northern Illinois, 14-6.  Their offense is generally less potent. The Highlanders have scored five or fewer runs in 20 games. They currently rank fourth in the league with 137 runs scored. The homies had opportunities over the first two weekends of conference play. After opening the Big West with a 2-0 start, Long Beach State dropped its next three games before righting the ship on Sunday with a win over UC Davis. Those losses make this with Riverside even more important since both sides come in with identical 3-3 records. Oddly, the Long Beach hopes center on the skinny freshman catcher from Hawaii, Royce Murai, with his .304 average and improving defense. Coming into the season, UCR was picked to finish second in the BWC and has struggled to meet those expectations.
 
The Highlanders enter the weekend with a 15-12 overall record and, like LBSU, a 3-3 mark in league play. David Andriese leads a potent UCR offense with a .327 batting average and three home runs, while Tony Nix and Justin Shults are returning players that are also both over .300, part of a team offense that his hitting .285 on the year, second best in the Big West. Long Beach State lost two out of three to the UCR last year in Riverside, but the Niners lead the all-time series between the teams 48-29-1. And in my favorite stat category, “Hit by Pitch,” our boy Brennan is in a tie for third: Trajano and Crocker lead the category with 10 each then Metzger, Lorenzen and Thomas all at 9… lean in lads, and get your daily dose.
 
DUST ON THE MOVE—A couple of all conference talents are making noise about moving on.  Irvine’s Eric Wise twittered a suggestion that he will transfer from UCI to a destination unknown, and Long Beach State’s Freshmen of the Year, Brandi Henton, told coach Jody Wynn the same thing. The Beach has had back luck with female stars, in recent times they have lost an all-star golfer, volleyball player and softball player. 
I need some background on this.

Perhaps the alumni association is saluting the old campus name of Los Angeles-Orange County State College but they are sending our cash-carrying ‘Niner fans to Fullerton on Sunday May 15 for a pre-game BBQ ($20) before the ‘Niner/F-Hat baseball game. I like tail-gating but hate sending CSUF the parking and ticket revenue when I don’t recall the same type of programming coming the Blair way from the dark side of the Orange Curtain.
 
Money and politics news update. Remember that student referendum to raise fees for football? The vote did draw a decent turnout, 3,085, but lost with 48-percent saying yea and 52-percent nay. The irony pointed out by the Long Beach Union Weekly newspaper is that “it required just over 2,000 signatures to get the item on the ballot yet only 1,479 voted for it…”
 
Party lines—Wednesday was a doubleheader, student-athlete supporter lunch in the Union and then fancy flood for the women’s hoop dinner banquet at Old Ranch. Next big party is the 17th annual Jewels of the Night on May 14th, which yes is the middle game of the baseball series at Fullerton. If you got a spare $25,000 you can be a Diamond Sponsor and get extra eggs from Joe’s Jost.