College baseball notebook: Best in the West are flexing with torrid starts to the season

West Coast college baseball aficionados are puffing out their collective chests one month into the season, and they have good cause. UCLA, Southern California and Oregon have combined to win 53 of their first 59 games.

Before the sport's epicenter moved to the Southeastern Conference in the 1990s, the power resided west of the Rockies. Since Oregon State won the 2018 national championship, no other team from the West has reached the finals over eight College World Series.

The crumbling of the Pac-12 and defections of UCLA, USC, Oregon and Washington to the Big Ten shook up traditionalists. For them, the fast starts by the Bruins, Trojans and Ducks are good tonic.

UCLA (17-2, 6-0) is the consensus No. 1 team, out to its best conference start since 1977 and has won 11 straight games for its longest streak since 2020. The Bruins also have the projected No. 1 pick in the MLB amateur draft in shortstop Roch Cholowsky, a rising star in slugger Will Gasparino and an ace in San Diego transfer Logan Reddemann.

USC (19-1, 5-1) set a program record with its 19-0 start, the Trojans' longest win streak since 1955. The loss, 2-1 at Northwestern, came Saturday as it was snowing in Evanston, Illinois.

The Trojans have been nails on the mound and in the field. They lead the nation with a 1.61 ERA and 4.79 hits allowed per nine innings and are tied for first with five shutouts. Grant Govel has allowed one earned run in 33 innings (0.27) and Mason Edwards has given up one in 30 innings (0.30) and is second nationally with 52 strikeouts.

The Ducks (17-3, 5-1) have won six straight after freshman Angel Laya's base hit in the bottom of the ninth inning Sunday produced a 7-6 walk-off win over Indiana. Oregon looks like a complete team, with Drew Smith batting .450 and slugging .900 and Will Sanford leading a strong pitching staff with a 3-0 record and 1.37 ERA over 26 1/3 innings.

UCLA, Texas and Georgia Tech are the top three teams by D1Baseball.com, Baseball America and the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association.

The Bruins run-ruled UC Irvine and swept Michigan at home last week. Texas (18-1) beat Texas State to improve to 16-0 and then took its first loss in the opener of its home series against Mississippi, 9-8 in 11 innings. The Longhorns won the next two to take the series. Georgia Tech (17-3) run-ruled West Georgia and took two of three at Clemson.

The LSU Tigers (14-7, 1-2 SEC) entered the season as defending national champions and a co-No. 1 in the preseason Top 25s, and now they aren't even ranked.

Following a 8-0 start, the Tigers have lost seven of 13. Since losing to McNeese State on Feb. 24, LSU has dropped games to Northeastern and Louisiana-Lafayette and lost series against Sacramento State and Vanderbilt.

“Our guys take a lot of pride in this,” coach Jay Johnson said, “and they haven’t played as well as they want to, and there are some negative feelings that come along with those things. You have to get past being embarrassed or afraid to fail, and I thought there were some good steps in that direction this week."

Jake Brown is mashing with a .419 batting average, 11 homers and 37 RBIs, but the Tigers are last in the SEC in ERA (5.24) and fielding (.964).

Notre Dame’s Noah Coy and Davis Johnson each hit grand slams in a 10-run fourth inning that led to a 14-11 win at Louisville on Friday. The Irish dropped the next two games in the series. ... North Carolina has won five in a row after taking three from California for its first road sweep in two years. ... Here's something you don't see often in the transfer portal era: Indiana's entire starting lineup and starting pitcher in Sunday's game at Oregon were recruited by the Hoosiers out of high school, a first in coach Jeff Mercer's eight seasons. ... West Virginia's Maxx Yehl threw eight shutout innings in an 8-0 win over Baylor, and his 12 strikeouts were most on the road by a Mountaineers pitcher since 2019.

AP college sports: https://apnews.com/hub/college-sports

FILE - Oregon's Drew Smith (17) during an NCAA regional baseball game on Friday, May 31, 2024 in Santa Barbara, Calif. (AP Photo/John McCoy,File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court will hear arguments over the Trump administration’s push to end legal protections for people fleeing war and natural disaster from countries around the world, including Haiti and Syria.

The court declined, though, to immediately lift the protections for hundreds of thousands of people Monday, allowing them to live and work in the U.S. legally amid the administration’s wider crackdown on immigration.

The case will be heard in April, a fast schedule for the nation's highest court, with a decision expected weeks or months later.

The conservative-majority court has sided with the Trump administration on the issue before and allowed the end of temporary legal status for a total of 600,000 people from Venezuela while lawsuits play out, exposing them to potential deportation. The court did not explain its legal reasoning, as is common on its emergency docket.

The Trump administration filed emergency appeals after lower courts stopped the immediate end of the program for 350,000 people from Haiti and 6,000 people from Syria.

The administration asked the court to lift those decisions, hear arguments and issue a broad ruling that would block courts from intervening when Homeland Security decides to end protections.

The Justice Department argued that the Department of Homeland Security has sole power over the program, which was designed to be temporary.

“Lower courts are again attempting to block major executive-branch policy initiatives in ways that inflict specific harms to the national interest and foreign relations,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in court documents.

But immigration attorneys argued that both countries are still largely in crisis and people can't return safely.

“Without a functioning government, Haiti is a nation in turmoil. Rape, kidnapping, and murder are rampant, while food, housing, and medical care are scarce,” attorneys wrote, pointing to reports that four Haitian women were recently found dead months after they were deported from the U.S.

Lupe Aguirre, director of the International Refugee Assistance Project, said Syrians are relieved they will stay protected for now, but disappointed the court agreed to hear the case before it has fully worked its way through lower courts.

Courts in New York and Washington, D.C., have agreed to delay the end of protections, with one finding that “hostility to nonwhite immigrants” likely played a role in the decision to end protections for Haitians. During his presidential campaign, Trump amplified false rumors that Haitian immigrants were abducting and eating dogs and cats.

Appeals courts left the decisions in place.

A total of about 1.3 million people fleeing armed conflict, natural disasters and political instability in countries around the world have been granted temporary protected status. Federal authorities have said conditions in the affected countries have improved and denied racial animus played any role.

The protections for Haitians were first granted in 2010 after a catastrophic earthquake and have been extended multiple times amid ongoing gang violence that has displaced more than a million people, according to court documents.

Protections for Syrians were first granted protected status in 2012, during a civil war that lasted for more than a decade before the fall of President Bashar Assad’s government in late 2024.

Congress created TPS in 1990 to prevent deportations to countries suffering from natural disasters, civil strife or other dangerous conditions. The designation is granted in 18-month increments by the Homeland Security secretary.

It allows people to legally live and work in the U.S., though it does not provide a path to citizenship. DHS has moved to terminate the program for people from multiple countries since Republican Donald Trump returned to the White House.

The U.S. Supreme Court as seen during a snowy day on Capitol Hill Thursday, March 12, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)