EUGENE, Ore.—When Arizona begins its fourth consecutive NCAA Tournament under Chip Hale, and fifth overall, the starting pitcher will be representing the team he grew up watching. Same with the starting shortstop and No. 3 hitter, as well as the DH whose home run in the Big 12 championship game helped force extra innings.
The Wildcats have a distinctly Tucson flavor to its current roster, a theme under Hale and much more so than in the decade before him. Two-thirds of the projected starting rotation for the Eugene Regional, including Friday night starter Owen Kramkowski, are from Southern Arizona, while Mason White went to Salpointe Catholic and Andrew Cain graduated from Ironwood Ridge in Oro Valley.
“I was Chip’s first recruit and I was five minutes from campus,” White said. “It just shows just what the current staff wants from Tucson.”
Throw in Raul Garayzar, who is in line to start Arizona’s second regional game, is from Rio Rico south of Tucson. The four key contributors from the Tucson area are the most on a UA team that’s made the postseason since 2008, when the quartet of Ryan Perry, TJ Steele, Rafael Valenzuela and CJ Ziegler helped the Wildcats reach the Super Regionals.
Arizona (39-18) opens play Friday at 1 p.m. PT at PK Park against Cal Poly, the Big West Tournament champion, with host Oregon and WAC Tournament champ Utah Valley meeting at 6 p.m. PT. Winners and losers meet on Saturday, with the regional final set for Sunday.
The Wildcats are seeking their first NCAA Tournament win since 2022, when they fell to eventual College World Series champ Ole Miss in the Coral Gables Regional final. That was the first of five consecutive tourney losses, going 0-2 in Fayetteville in 2023 and as a host last season.
“I feel like that’s something we need to get past as a program, under me and under our coaching staff, we need to be able to come through,” Hale said. “I won’t shy away from it. It’s definitely something that I would like to do.”
Scouting the Mustangs
Cal Poly (41-17) is in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2014, when it hosted a regional in San Luis Obispo. The Mustangs went 4-1 at the Big West tourney, beating regular season champ UC-Irvine twice to get the automatic bid or they may not have made the 64-team field despite a strong resume and RPI.
So what was their reward? Major travel delays getting to Eugene.
While half the travel party flew Wednesday from the small airport in San Luis Obispo to Portland, the other half bussed 3.5 hours to San Francisco with a scheduled flight to Eugene. But that plane “never arrived,” coach Larry Lee said, with the flight rescheduled for Thursday morning.
“We just deal with it,” Lee said. “We travel by bus quite a bit.”
Hale said Cal Poly is a very West Coast team, one that will play small ball and steal bases. The Mustangs have 44 sacrifice bunts and 43 stolen bases, with nearly 70 percent of their hits going for singles compared to 61 percent for Arizona.
“They’re going to bunt when they get the opportunity, they’re going to put pressure on you,” Hale said.
Poly will start sophomore righty Griffin Naess, who has a 3.38 ERA in 88 innings. He went six or more shutout innings to two of his last three starts including against Cal State Fullerton (the Big West tourney host) in the conference tournament.
“The pitcher is going to throw strikes,” Hale said. “He eeavily relies on his change-up, so we’re going to have to get the ball up.”
Familiar field, friendly dimensions
Arizona is playing in Eugene for the third time in four years, going 1-5 at PK Park in Pac-12 games against Oregon. The artificial turf is “more true” than others the UA has played on this season, per White, especially compared to older surfaces at Houston and Texas Tech, and reliever Tony Pluta said the mound feels taller than in most parks.
“You feel like you’re close to the plate, you can just rip it,” said Pluta, who is one save away from tying the UA single-season record of 13. “It just feels different, sometimes it’s just due to the backstop being shorter or away.”
PK Park is not big in the outfield, especially compared to Hi Corbett Field. It’s 335 feet to left field (366 at HiC), 325 to right (349), and while center field is 400 feet deep the power alleys are significantly shorter than the 400-plus ones in Tucson.
This may explain why Oregon has hit 107 home runs, 9th-best nationally and most in school history. Arizona has hit 59, with 33 away from home eight at Globe Life Field and 20 in 15 Big 12 road games.
“It plays to our advantage of being smaller, because we play in such a big yard, so we’re used to not being able to hit as many home runs,” said White, whose hit 10 of his 16 homers this season outside of Tucson. “But when you get in a smaller field, I guess you’d call it, it gives you more confidence.”
Who will get hot?
White was named Big 12 Tournament MVP (after winning the Pac-12 tourney MVP in 2024) after going 7 for 11 with three homers and seven RBI while also scoring the championship-winning run. He enters the NCAA tourney hitting .449 in May with seven homers and 22 RBI.
Though the UA went 0-2 at home last postseason, White was 3 for 8 with two doubles and as a freshman in 2023 homered in both losses in Fayetteville. He has a hit in 14 of 15 conference or NCAA tourney games.
“I love it, I love the pressure of regional tournament,” he said. “It feels like everyone’s on the same level. There’s no other external factors in play.”
It will take more than one hot hitter for Arizona to get out of the regional, though. Adonys Guzman was 5 of 12 in Arlington and a few others had timely hits, but if not for Cain’s 9th-inning homer against TCU the Wildcats wouldn’t have won the title.
Two players in particular that the UA could benefit from getting back on track are Garen Caulfield and Aaron Walton. Caulfield is hitting .250 in May with 10 strikeouts, while Walton is 10 for 52 (.192) since homering twice against TCU on May 2 to see his average drop from .357 to .309.
“I think if Walton and Garen get back to some sort of a middle ground we could be dangerous,” Hale said. “I really do think that. I think they’re both right there, right now, in the conversation.”
Pitching plan
If all goes as hoped, Kramkowski, Garayzar and Smith Bailey will go Friday, Saturday and Sunday like a normal regular season weekend. But one loss changes everything, with Arizona needing to play as many as five games in four days.
And while the Wildcats’ starters have been on fire lately, with only three runs allowed 28 innings over their last five starts, the first sign of trouble could mean a quick hook. Hale said pitching coach Kevin Vance has a good plan for the 13 arms on the 27-man playoff roster.
“You’re going to go to the bullpen probably a little bit sooner,” Hale said. “Especially if it’s an elimination game.”
Arizona has allowed one run in four consecutive games, its longest stretch since 1974. That came after a rut where it had lost five of six, allowing seven or more runs all but once.
“It was a little bit of a mental reset,” Pluta said. “I mean, we just kind of started having a little more fun. We had a little more on the dugout. We had a little more fun on the field pregame.We were just realizing that, you know, it’s this kind of time of year, it’s time to go. And we were ready.”