Taking care of business

According to left-fielder Mike Wagner, the No. 23 Washington baseball team is ready for regional play this weekend. In fact, he said, his team has been prepared for today's matchup against second-seeded Minnesota since the Huskies were eliminated from postseason play exactly one year ago.

"We have been waiting since last season to get back to where we are now," said Wagner, a junior who belted 15 homers with a .319 batting average during the regular season. "We feel like this is just the beginning of our season; this is a stepping stone to our ultimate goal."

Making its sixth playoff appearance in the past 12 seasons, the third-seeded UW nine (15-9 Pac-10, 40-16 overall) will face the Golden Gophers for game one of the Long Beach Regional at 3 today. The winner of the contest will take on the victor of the 7 p.m. game between top-seeded Long Beach, the regional host, and four-seed Pepperdine.

The team to triumph in the double-elimination regional will challenge the winner of a regional hosted by Stanford in a best-of-three Super Regional next weekend, with the College World Series in Omaha the last stop on the playoff trail.

The Huskies return to the playoffs more experienced, more consistent and with unfinished business to take care of. At last season's regional tournament, a dramatic two-out, three-run Jay Garthwaite homer handed the UW a 7-6 win over Rice and forced a second championship game, but the Owls captured the final matchup 14-2.

"None of us had ever been to a regional before," said Wagner. "What we learned last year is that it is really important to come out of the blocks and play well in the first game."

Coming off a series sweep of conference-rival USC with seven wins in their final eight regular-season games, the Huskies seem to be riding a streak of success with no apparent end in sight.

"We've been playing really well for the last six weeks; it seems like every week we've gotten better," said UW baseball coach Ken Knutson, who has taken the Huskies on five trips to the postseason during his 11 seasons at the helm. "We're in as good of shape now as we were at any point in the season."

While he feels secure that his squad will play admirably, this weekend's opponents will be equally adept on the diamond, Knutson warned.

"This time of year, everybody's good," he said. "It's more about how we play as opposed to how they are going to do."

Minnesota (26-4 Big Ten, 39-20) comes in with an impressive team batting average -- .335 compared to the Huskies' .308 -- but the Golden Gophers tend to make contact without clearing the fences. The squad has collected 30 round-trippers this season, while the powerful-at-the-plate UW has belted more than three times that many, with three Huskies in double digits. Though Minnesota holds a slight 3-2 all-time advantage over the Huskies, the two teams have not met since 1998.

Junior Husky Chad Boudon, who has contributed 21 of Washington's 93 home runs, believes that last weekend's dominance of the Trojans reveals that the Huskies can get the edge in any situation.

"We beat USC three different ways: We blew them out of the water, we beat them in a close game and we came back from six runs," said the school home-run-record holder. "It shows the character of our team, that we can play with any kind of lead or any kind of deficit. We can come back and beat everybody."

Knutson thinks Washington simply needs to maintain its command on the mound while continuing to flex Husky muscle at the plate in order to continue the UW's postseason run.

"We just need to hold them down with our pitching and defense -- which have both been great this year -- and then play for some big innings and maybe hit some balls over the fence," he said.

Game one, which UW righty Sean White is scheduled to toss, will be televised live by Fox Sports Northwest; all Husky action will air live on the radio at KKNW AM-1150.