OMAHA, Neb. – The times the UCLA Bruins have had to play from behind this year have been few, and there may have been no bigger moment where they needed to battle back than the Big Ten tournament quarterfinals.
Coming off a six-day layoff and down 3-1 to the fifth-seeded Purdue Boilermakers, the Bruins tied the game with two runs in the eighth and battled to get the winning run to third base with one out in the ninth, where Mulivai Levu sent a sac fly to right field that got Aidan Espinoza home and UCLA into the semifinals with a 4-3 win.
“We’re very fortunate to win, I think, at the end of the day. But a really good win, good resiliency,” said UCLA head coach John Savage said following the game. “But at the end of the day, for us to go where we want to go, we’ve got to play much, much better.”
Early on, the Boilermakers looked like they could pull off an upset. In the top of the third with one out, Brandon Rogers on second and Avery Moore on first, a single by Sam Flores scored Rogers and advanced Moore to third. With Jackson Bessette at the plate, Flores broke for second and the throw from UCLA’s Cashel Dugger went into the outfield, allowing Moore to scamper home to give Purdue a 2-0 lead.
On the mound, starter Thomas Howard cruised through five innings, allowing a single run on two hits and a walk, striking out four.
“He’s been waiting for this game when we told him yesterday. That’s why we threw him, because he’s been our emotional leader from the pitching staff, and he won the baseball,” said Purdue head coach Greg Goff after the game. “And I just thought he just pitched with so much courage and just attacked those guys, you know, and that’s what it looks like.”
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Asked about how the layoff might have affected his team’s bats, Savage said it was less about the six days between games or the uncertainty of the delayed start than it was finding pitches to hit in hitter’s counts.
“I thought we’ve had a good week of practice, but we were not on time with 1-0 and 2-0 and 2-1 and 3-1 [counts],” Savage said. “And that’s, you’re going to get carved up at this time of the year if you’re not ready to hit in those counts. You’ve got to take advantage. We’ve worked really hard getting in those counts all season. We’ve done a really good job of taking advantage of things. And tonight, I think we did a very good job of that.”
UCLA cut the lead to one in the bottom of the sixth. After Roch Cholowsky reached on a single, Goff pulled Howard and brought on Jake Kramer, who walked Mulivai Levu and moved Cholowsky over to second, then both runners advanced on a wild pitch with Peyton Brennan at the plate. Brennan then hit a fly ball to right that was deep enough to move Cholowsky 90 more feet and make it a 2-1 game.
In the top of the seventh, UCLA put flamethrowing reliever Cal Randall on the mound to face the top of the Purdue lineup, and after Randall fanned Eli Anderson swinging at a changeup, Brandon Rogers launched a fastball over the left field wall to restore a two-run lead for the Boilermakers. The solo shot was the first homer of the tournament.
An inning later, with Mulivai Levu on first after hitting a two-out single, Roman Martin launched the 1-2 offering from Purdue’s Jake Kramer deep to left center field, where it caromed off the top of the wall and back to the outfield grass. Martin raced around to third, and second base umpire Jason Harstick signaled the ball was a home run, and Martin went home. A video review reversed the call and Martin was credited with a triple. Peyton Brennan then singled Martin home to tie the game at three apiece, and Will Gasparino followed him with a single to put the go-ahead run in scoring position, but Cashel Dugger struck out to end the inning.
With one out in the bottom of the ninth, Aidan Espinoza reached on an error by Purdue shortstop Westin Boyle. Bruins No. 9 hitter Phoenix Call tried to advance Espinoza with a bunt, and when Aaron Manias couldn’t corral the throw from pitcher Jake Kramer, suddenly the Bruins had runners on first and second with one out and the top of the order coming up. Dean West laid down a successful sacrifice bunt back to the mound to advance both runners, and Purdue elected to give Cholowsky a free pass. With a 2-1 count, Mulivai Levu lofted a sacrifice fly to score Espinoza and send UCLA on to Saturday’s semifinal.
At the plate, with the winning run 90 feet away, Levu’s approach was to stay calm.
“The atmosphere was pretty sick, but [I had to] just try to slow my heart rate down,” he said following the game. “Just do a job. I wasn’t trying to do too much. Just try to put it in play for the man up there to score, and that’s about it.”
NCAA Tournament Implications – An upset would have almost certainly pushed Purdue high enough in the RPI rankings to get them into the field of 64. They started the day ranked No. 55, so the Boilermakers are likely to still be on the bubble, but Goff thinks his team should get in.
“We played 14 weekends, and we won 11 of the 14 weekends this year. It’s pretty impressive – and we won 18 games in the fourth-best league in the country. I’m very proud of that,” Goff said. “To finish fifth in this league, these guys are deserving to go to the next round, especially the way they played tonight. And to take the number one team in the country that way, they’re deserving of it. And I hope they watch. I hope they really evaluate, don’t get caught up in an RPI number, and really look at the body of work that these young men have done.”
Savage agrees.
“They are a good team. I think they are a regional team. I truly believe that. I hope the committee looks at that and looks how they played us, looks how, you know, they almost won 40 games,” the Bruins head coach said. “So, credit to them for playing very well. And they had the game, you know, they really had the game where they wanted to.”
Weather and the Schedule – The start of the game was originally scheduled for 2 p.m. CDT but pushed back to 7 p.m. CDT after the first game of the day suffered a 102-minute rain delay and the forecast indicated the possibility of heavy rain all afternoon.
Midway through the game, the Big Ten announced that the third quarterfinal game between Nebraska and Michigan would begin at 11 p.m. CDT if the game between UCLA and Purdue ended by 10:20 p.m. Several members of the media were keeping track of the time as UCLA batted in the ninth, and the general consensus was that Levu crossed the plate to end the game at 10:19:47 p.m., making the curfew by 13 seconds.
The fourth quarterfinal, originally scheduled for 9 p.m. CDT Friday, will be played on Saturday at a time yet to be announced, with the semifinals to follow.
Where to Watch – The entire 2026 Big Ten Baseball Championship will be broadcast live on the Big Ten Network and the games will also be available on the FOX Sports App.
2026 Big Ten Tournament Schedule
All times Eastern Daylight Time
All games played at Charles Schwab Field, Omaha, Nebraska
Tuesday, May 19
No. 12 Michigan State 8, No. 5 Purdue 4 – Game 1 – Recap
No. 8 Iowa 10, No. 9 Illinois 6 – Game 2 – Recap
No. 7 Michigan 10, No. 10 Rutgers 0 (Seven Innings) – Game 3 – Recap
No. 11 Washington 8, No. 6 Ohio State 6 – Game 4 – Recap
Wednesday, May 20
No. 5 Purdue 3, No. 9 Illinois 1 – Game 5 – Recap
No. 6 Ohio State 3, No. 10 Rutgers 2 – Game 6 – Recap
No. 12 Michigan State 4, No. 8 Iowa 3 – Game 7 – Recap
No. 11 Washington 7, No. 7 Michigan 1 – Game 8 – Recap
Thursday, May 21
No. 5 Purdue 8, No. 8 Iowa 1 – Game 9
No. 7 Michigan 3, No. 6 Ohio State 0 – Game 10
Friday, May 22
No. 4 Southern California 7, No. 12 Michigan State 0 – Game 11
No. 1 UCLA 4, No. 5 Purdue 3 – Game 12
11 p.m. – No. 7 Michigan vs. No. 2 Nebraska – Game 13
Saturday, May 23
TBD – No. 11 Washington vs. No. 3 Oregon – Game 14
TBD – No. 4 Southern California vs. No. 1 UCLA 4 – Semifinal 1 – Game 15
TBD – Game 13 Winning Team vs. Game 14 Winning Team – Semifinal 2 – Game 16
Sunday, May 24
3 p.m. EDT – Championship Game
Photo: The UCLA Bruins mob Mulivai Levu after his ninth-inning sac fly got them a 4-3 win over Purdue (Courtesy of UCLA Baseball on X)
