The No. 22 Arizona State Sun Devils (32-10, 13-8 Pac-12) have 13 games remaining on their 2019 regular season slate.

Six of those matchups are at home against the nation’s current top two ranked teams, starting with this weekend’s series against the No. 1 UCLA Bruins (35-7, 14-4). The other seven matchups that separate those two series are on the road, where the Sun Devils are .500 over 14 games.

Nevertheless, ASU is sticking to its one game at a time approach as each subsequent game will have greater implications for the team’s postseason standing.

“We want to win a conference championship, we want to do the regionals, host regionals- all that stuff- get to the World Series, win the World Series,” manager Tracy Smith said, “but if you get too far out ahead of yourself or you put things way out in front of you like that, it really gets away from the task at hand.”

With their current ranking, the Sun Devils are on the outside looking in at being a top 16 seeded team for NCAA tournament, which would allow them to host a regional under the new format used in 2018.

But for now, the final month of the college baseball regular season awaits. Coming off losing two out of three at Washington last weekend, here are some pertinent topics discussed to the media Thursday afternoon.

Preview of the UCLA matchup; dominant pitching versus hot bats

The Bruins arrive in Tempe coming off an 8-5 victory at Pepperdine Tuesday night, which kicked off a stretch of eight road games over their next nine.

As to be expected with the top-ranked team though, they will be unfazed as they’ve won 11 of 14 road games on the season and currently ride a six-game win streak.

“You’re probably going to get few opportunities, so you got to take advantage of those opportunities and our situational hitting, we need to make sure that we’re really good on that- it’s just doing the little things because they’re not going to beat themselves,” Smith said.

“That said, I don’t think there’s a lot of offenses like ours so we’re not going into this thinking ‘Jeez, we have no chance to score,’ we’re pretty confident in what we do offensively and we’re looking forward to that matchup.”

The Sun Devils are currently 2.5 games behind the Bruins for third in the conference standings, so this weekend presents an opportunity to gain ground or even jump up a spot in the standings in the unlikely event of an ASU sweep.

This matchup will be intriguing, at least in the home half of innings, as UCLA holds the top team earned run average in the NCAA at 2.62- 0.3 below the next closest team in Oregon State.

On the flip side, ASU is tied for fourth in the NCAA in batting average, hitting .318, and Hunter Bishop along with Spencer Torkelson are still two of the top 20 home run hitters in the nation with 18 and 14, respectively.

Smith expands on the mindset ASU must take with a challenging schedule, his role in establishing it in the clubhouse

The first two games at Washington last weekend did not go as the Sun Devils hoped, as Saturday’s loss was especially gut-wrenching with the team getting one strike from an extra-innings victory, only to fall 10-9.

But ASU regathered itself to come out on top 11-6 in the series finale, leaving Seattle on a high note despite the disappointing series as a whole.

On weekends like this, Smith emphasized that sometimes thinking about a matchup in terms of the whole series isn’t necessarily the best way to approach things game-by-game.

“There’s this tendency, particularly with the three-game thing in college, is you go into a series and there’s a lot of emphasis placed on those three games as like this little nugget,” Smith said, “and if you lose two of those, the tendency is ‘well it’s made, we’ve lost.’ Well but, what we try to say is ‘hey man, this season is a 55-game season, every game is a whole separate deal in-and-of itself,’ and so we got to look at this like does it matter, we could’ve won (those first two games) I’d still be saying the same thing to you, because the tendency is sometimes when you win the first two you relax.”

Smith went on to compliment the maturity of his guys to come out strong on Sunday after such a tough loss Saturday.

With the win, ASU made it through the month of April without being on either end of a series sweep.

Smith later detailed his approach on setting the tone in the clubhouse for this season’s team.

“They are looking to me as a team to lead them and set the tone, to me I think probably more up here,” Smith said pointing to his head. “If we’re saying we trust you then we better model and behave like we trust them and that to me is treating these guys like men because up to this point they have given me no reason to do otherwise.”

He emphasized that this involves not ripping into the team after a tough loss like Saturday- as many people thought he should've- but rather helping everyone refocus to play their best baseball the next day.

Lin steps up his level of play during Washington series

Junior catcher Lyle Lin was praised by Smith for his efforts in the Washington series, as he hit well all weekend while impressing behind the dish, as he got the chance to catch at some point during all three games.

Lin ended up hitting 6 for 11 with five RBI’s, five runs scored and a pair of home runs on the weekend as a whole.

He has come off the bench or sat out numerous games in April, so his performance could force Smith to work him into the lineup more often in this final month.

“The catching thing for us, we’ve gone back-and-forth a little bit- and actually, I thought he caught the ball really well this weekend- probably one of the biggest positives for me coming out of last weekend was just how Lyle played all the way around,” Smith said.

Redshirt sophomore catcher Sam Ferri has started at catcher this season more often than not, and as a result of his return to the field in 2019 Lin has seen a slightly reduced role from a season ago.

But Smith believes the the team can make the best use of both players and sees nothing wrong with some healthy competition.

“If we can get that production and level of play (from Lin), we feel like that’s going to help us down the stretch too and give us a chance to rest Sam and not feel like we’re dropping off,” Smith said. “I think the fact that those two are healthily competing against each other has elevated the play of both of them.”

Dabovich returns to action, Marsh looks to bounce back in Friday role

On Sunday, sophomore right-hander R.J. Dabovich returned to the mound for the first time in three weeks, recording the final four outs in order- three by strikeout- en route to his first save of the season.

He had been part of the starting rotation as the go-to guy on Sunday before going down to injury after the USC game on April 7.

Smith addressed his role going forward, especially with consideration to his strong showing in his return to action.

“On a Friday and Saturday, the only role that he’d be utilized in serving would be that if we’re winning,” Smith said. “But if worst-case scenario you didn’t utilize that role because you’re not winning, you still have the option to put him out there on Sunday.”

“So, we’re just going to kind of let that play out but it feels good knowing that that piece is there. We didn’t know how he was going to respond because he hadn’t been on the mound since we shut him down- in a competitive situation- so it was good to see him get out there, throw strikes and really take charge of that ninth inning.”

On the other hand, junior starter Alec Marsh had an outing to forget in Seattle, imploding to allow nine runs over two innings pitched in Friday night’s loss, undoubtedly his worst outing of the season.

Naturally, he will be the first one to take the mound in this weekend’s series against the Bruins in the opening game Friday night.

“(Washington) hit a home run, and that probably was as much our fault on the scout piece that we did something we shouldn’t have done. Outside of that, I know it sounds nuts when you’re looking at nine runs up on the board in two innings, but I think he gave up two hard hit balls,” Smith said.

“There were probably three or four balls, left-handed hitters squeaking them inside the third-base line, bloop singles and sometimes that stuff happens. So, I know it looked like a bad bad outing on paper but you go back at it, honestly, I just chalk it up to it’s just one of those days. So, he’s confident, we’re confident and looking for him to come out and be ready for us on Friday.”

After last outing’s debacle, Marsh will take the bump Friday night with an 8-2 record and 3.03 ERA.

Quote of the day

This one comes from starting shortstop Alika Williams, who expressed the team’s desire to achieve what they believe their talent says they’re capable of.

“This is something special and we don’t want to waste this,” Williams said. “This is a once in a lifetime team that we got right now with the talent we have and I think we’ve all realized that. We’re not trying to waste this year; this could be something special.”