Tulane Baseball Challenges Top-Ranked UCLA This Afternoon
Start Time vs UCLA Moved Up
The Tulane baseball team finishes up the California road trip across town against No. 2 / No. 1 UCLA on Tuesday, Feb. 17, at 3 p.m. CST at Jackie Robinson Stadium. The game was moved up from a night start because of possible severe weather moving into Southern California.
"You've got to treat it like a normal game," senior shortstop Kaikea Harrison told us. "We can't fear anybody. Honestly, it's like (having) a bigger chip on our shoulder, proving to everybody (how good Tulane is)."
The contest against UCLA will be shown on the Big Ten Network+. The Voice of the Green Wave, Corey Gloor, will return to call the action on the Tulane Sports Network from Learfield on WRBH 88.3 FM.
Pitching Matchup
The Green Wave will start senior J.D. Rodriguez. Rodriguez is fresh off tossing 4.2 scoreless innings earning a victory in relief on Friday, Feb. 13, with a career-high nine strikeouts against Loyola Marymount. Last season, he appeared in 14 games with eight starts. He went 2-2 with a 6.54 ERA in 26.1 innings thrown.
UCLA is planning on starting freshman right-handed pitcher Angel Cervantes. Cervantes is a Lynwood, California native, rated as the No. 2 right-handed pitcher by Prep Baseball and the No. 5 prospect overall in the state of California. He pitched in one game in the opening series against UC-San Diego, allowing two hits and two walks plus a run in an inning of work.
Scouting UCLA
The Bruins are one of the premier programs in college baseball and come into the week ranked at No. 2 nationally in the USA Today Coaches’ Poll and No. 1 in the poll by D1 Baseball. UCLA was also unanimously chosen to repeat as the champions in the Big Ten Conference by their league’s coaches.
The Bruins took two of the first three games to start the season against UC San Diego. Payton Brennan led the charge against the Tritons with four hits, a home run and five RBIs. Roch Cholowsky already has three extra bases hit (two doubles and a home run) in his first three games.
The program went 48-18 last season including a run to the College World Series. Cholowsky, the reigning Big 10 Player of the Year and Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year, hit .353 with 80 runs, 89 hits, 23 home runs, 74 RBIs, 179 total bases and a .710 slugging percentage. Mullivai Levu had a .320 batting average with 61 runs, 87 hits, 12 home runs and 85 RBIs in 2025. The Bruins welcome back two of the squad’s top pitchers from a season ago in Michael Barnett and Ian May. Barnett had a 12-1 record with 75 strikeouts in 86 innings worked. May had an 8-3 record in 70.2 innings worked.
Head Coach John Savage is in his 22nd year in charge of the program. He is 726-482-2 with four College World Series appearances during his time with the Bruins.
Series History
UCLA leads Tulane 6-2 since the start of the series in 1974...The last time the two teams met was during the 2023 campaign with the Bruins earning a 10-3 victory (3/3/23).
Against the Big 10 Conference
The Green Wave are 69-53 all-time against current schools in the Big 10 Conference. Tulane has been playing Big 10 member institutions since 1915 when the program took on Illinois. The last time that Tulane faced off with a current Big 10 Conference school was in 2024 when the program took two of three against Northwestern to start the season (2/16-18/24).
Coming In On A Streak
Jason Wachs, despite seeing his hitting streak snapped at 23 games following the opening game of the season against LMU, has still now reached base safely in 29 consecutive games dating back to the end of last season.
Who’s Hot in the First Three Games
Kaikea Harrison has started the season with seven hits in his first 15 at bats for a .467 batting average. He has a pair of three-hit performances to his name in two games after having two such games all of last season in 56 games. Harrison also has scored four runs and totaled a pair of doubles.
A.J. Groeneveld has begun his Tulane career with four hits including both a double and triple. He is also tied for second on the team in RBIs with three along with Matthias Haas, Tye Wood and Tanner Chun. Jason Wachs leads the club in RBIs with four.
J.D. Rodriguez and Beau Sampson are tied for the team lead with nine strikeouts.
Every out that Jack Brafa recorded in his two innings of relief against LMU was a strikeout.
Trends
Dating back to the end of last season, two of last three hits that James Agabedis III has are home runs.
Tulane’s game against No. 2 ranked (Coaches)/No. 1 (D1 Baseball) UCLA is the first time that the program has faced a ranked opponent since squaring off with No. 13 Southern Miss last season. The last time that Tulane faced a top 10 ranked opponent was against then No. 6 Oregon State in the Corvallis Regional (5/31/24). The last time Tulane defeated a top 10 opponent was earlier that season when the program swept then No. 6 ECU at home by scores of 6-5, 7-3 and 10-9.
Notables from the LMU Series
Tulane hit .275 as a team in the three-game set with 30 hits including 15 extra base hits.
The Wave's pitching staff recorded 44 strikeouts in 26 innings worked. The team’s three starting pitchers in the series: Trey Cehajic, Beau Sampson, and Jack Frankel combined to throw 11.2 innings with 19 strikeouts. Both of the team’s victories were earned by members of the bullpen in J.D. Rodriguez and Jack Brafa. Jude Abbadessa appeared in two of the three games of the series with both of his appearances coming in the ninth inning. He threw 1.2 scoreless with two strikeouts. The Green Wave bullpen only allowed a total of two earned run in 14.1 innings of use in the opening series while also registering 25 strikeouts. The Tulane pitching staff registered double digit strikeouts in every game of the series (14 - Gm 1, 11 - Gm 2 and 19 in Gm 3).
The Green Wave’s 19 strikeouts as a pitching staff in the series finale against LMU was the most for the program in 54 years and tied for third all-time at the school with the 2023 team’s 19 strikeouts against Penn. The team last struck out more than 19 when 21 strikeouts were recorded against Cornell of Iowa in 1972. The 1965 team struck out 20 against Ole Miss.
Of the team’s top pitching strikeout totals in school history, six have been achieved since the start of the 2023 season (19 at LMU - 2/15/26, 19 vs. Pennsylvania - 3/10/23, 17 vs. Rice - 4/5/25, 16 at Southeastern Louisiana - 2/19/25, 16 at Southeastern Louisiana - 3/12/25, and 16 vs. Northwestern - 2/16/24)
Thirteen different players made their Tulane debut in the series.
Portions Courtesy Tulane Athletics
Doug has covered a gamut of sporting events in his fifty-plus years in the field. He started doing sideline reporting for Louisiana Tech football games for the student radio station. Doug was Sports Director for KNOE-AM/FM in Monroe in the mid-80s, winning numerous awards from the Louisiana Sports Writers Association for Best Sportscast and Best Play-by-Play. High school play-by-play for teams in Monroe, Natchitoches, New Orleans, and Thibodaux, LA dot his resume. He did college play-by-play for Northwestern State University in Natchitoches for nine years. Then, moving to the Crescent City, Doug did television PBP of Tulane games and even filled in for legendary Tulane broadcaster, Ken Berthelot in the only game Kenny ever missed while doing the Green Wave games. His father was an alumnus of Tulane in the 1940s, so Doug has attended Tulane football games in old Tulane Stadium, the Superdome, and Yulman. He was one of the 86,000 plus on December 1, 1973, sitting in the North End Zone to seeTulane shutout the LSU Tigers, 14-0. He was there when the Posse ruled Fogelman and in Turchin when the Wave made it to the World Series. He currently is the public address voice of the Tulane baseball team.