{"id":330017,"date":"2026-05-24T02:10:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T02:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/330017\/"},"modified":"2026-05-24T02:10:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T02:10:12","slug":"uclas-mulivai-levu-hits-walk-off-to-beat-usc-reach-big-ten-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/330017\/","title":{"rendered":"UCLA’s Mulivai Levu hits walk-off to beat USC, reach Big Ten final"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Mulivai Levu<\/a> helped UCLA<\/a> remain the comeback kings of college baseball, hitting a walk-off, three-run home run to seal a 7-5 win<\/a> over rival USC<\/a> on Saturday and a spot in the Big Ten tournament championship game.<\/p>\n

It was No. 1 seed UCLA\u2019s 27th comeback win of the season and the second consecutive game Levu\u2019s hit sealed a victory during the Big Ten tournament played in Omaha, Neb.<\/p>\n

On Saturday night, Levu hit a walk-off sacrifice fly to seal UCLA\u2019s comeback 4-3 win over Purdue in the conference tournament quarterfinals.<\/p>\n

UCLA improved to 50-6, a record that Levu said gives the team confidence it will find a way to win.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the power of friendship right there. We\u2019re all well connected,\u201d Levu said during an interview Saturday on the Big Ten Network. \u201c… We just don\u2019t give up. We\u2019re never out of it, we\u2019re never doubting ourselves. We know what kind of lineup we\u2019ve got, we\u2019ve just got to use it.\u201d<\/p>\n

USC\u2019s Augie Lopez hit a double and the rest of the Trojans were active early, building a 3-0 lead in the third inning. Levu hit an RBI single in the bottom of the third to cut the deficit. Dominic Cadiz had an RBI single in the fourth before pitchers held both teams scoreless in the fifth and sixth innings.<\/p>\n

Dean West hit a two-run home run in the seventh to give UCLA its first lead at 4-3, and both teams were scoreless in the eighth.<\/p>\n

In the ninth, Adrian Lopez and Augie Lopez managed to score runs for USC, taking a 5-4 lead. Top Trojans reliever Adam Troy got No. 1 MLB draft prospect Roch Cholowsky to fly out.<\/p>\n

Then Levu entered the batter\u2019s box with two outs and hit the home run that sent USC (43-15) back to Los Angeles for a break before the NCAA tournament brackets are revealed Sunday night.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re rivals on the field, but those are our boys off the field,\u201d Levu said of the Trojans. \u201cThey\u2019re good guys and they\u2019re good team. We\u2019ll probably see them again later on in the playoff run. Props to them, it was a great game, they made it very interesting. I\u2019m just glad we won.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mulivai Levu helped UCLA remain the comeback kings of college baseball, hitting a walk-off, three-run home run to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330018,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[136976,136975,48,52,51,5814,47,50,49,63,136974,18158,21092,93049,427,103194,113097,1092,3533,114292,1543],"class_list":["post-330017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-augie-lopez","tag-comeback-king","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-lead","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-mulivai-levu","tag-no","tag-rbi-single","tag-rival-usc","tag-team","tag-third-inning","tag-two-run-home-run","tag-ucla","tag-usc","tag-walk-off","tag-win"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330017\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}