CWS 2025: UCLA's Toussaint Bythewood is son of 'Love & Basketball' director
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Which NCAA baseball teams could blow up the bracket
The Montgomery Advertiser's Adam Cole and The Southwest Times Record's Jackson Fuller break down who could wreck the tournament bracket.
With two outs, a runner on second base and a 2-2 count, Toussaint Bythewood ripped an opposite-field single to right field, bringing his UCLA baseball teammate home and breaking a scoreless deadlock in the top of the fourth inning against UTSA on June 8.
Ultimately, it was all the Bruins would need, with Bythewood's RBI standing as the game-winning hit as his team coasted to a 7-0 victory that finished off a sweep of the Los Angeles Super Regional against UTSA and sent UCLA to the College World Series for the first time in 12 years.
By the end of June, a city defined by its stars could have a few more.
REQUIRED READING: Diversity in College World Series field reminds us what college sports is all about
The Bruins are just one of eight college baseball teams whose championship dreams remain alive. With a few victories at Charles Schwab Field in Omaha, Nebraska — beginning with a June 14 game against Murray State — they'll cap off an already stellar season with the second NCAA championship in program history. Even if they're unable to complete the job, they'll have reached a point they haven't since their current roster was in elementary school.
The player who delivered the hit that sent them there is more than familiar with stardom.
Bythewood's parents, Reggie Rock Bythewood and Gina Prince-Bythewood, are directing-and-producing partners, with a number of notable credits to their names. As a junior outfielder and valued contributor on a team that's set to compete on its sport's biggest stage, Bythewood is making a name for himself apart from his mother and father's achievements in the film industry.
As UCLA's CWS journey begins Saturday, here's a closer look at Bythewood:
REQUIRED READING: NCAA baseball tournament winners and losers: College World Series full of surprises
Toussaint Bythewood parents
Bythewood is the son of Gina Prince-Bythewood and Reggie Rock Bythewood, who first met on the set of 'The Fresh Prince of Bel Air' and who went on to work together as writers on the 1990s sitcom 'A Different World' before later marrying.
The two are veterans of the entertainment industry, with a slew of film and television credits as writers, directors, producers and actors.
Prince-Bythewood, according to her IMDB profile, has 20 directorial credits, with a 21st currently in production. She's perhaps most famous for writing and directing the classic 2000 romantic sports drama 'Love & Basketball,' for which she won Independent Spirit and Black Reel awards. Interestingly enough, given where her son now plays baseball, the movie's two protagonists, played by Omar Epps and Sanaa Lathan, played college basketball at rival USC.
Prince-Bythewood has also directed 'The Woman King,' 'The Secret Life of Bees' and 'The Old Guard' — the first two of which she also wrote — along with episodes of 'Everybody Hates Chris,' 'The Bernie Mac Show' and 'Girlfriends.' In addition to her work behind the camera, she has 16 writing and 11 producing credits.
Reggie Rock Bythewood, meanwhile, directed the 2000 film 'Dancing in September' and co-created, along with his wife, the television series 'Shots Fired.' Among Bythewood's 12 writing credits are 'Get on the Bus,' an independent 1996 Spike Lee film centered around the Million Man March, and 'Notorious,' the 2009 biopic about the Notorious B.I.G. Most recently, he created and wrote 'Swagger,' an Apple TV+ series inspired by Kevin Durant's experience playing on the AAU basketball circuit.
Toussaint Bythewood, who is named after the military general and former slave who helped lead the Haitian Revolution, is one of two boys in the family, both of whom regularly visited the sets on which their parents were working growing up.
'We learned to bring our kids into the process,' Reggie Rock Bythewood said in a 2020 interview with Essence. 'Together we went through the process of why we feel at this time, we have to do this project, and put this out in the world, what it is we aspire to change. We really talked to them a lot about some of the lessons we've learned, and having a cause bigger than yourself. This is a family project and our kids understand why we're digging in so hard. I think that allowing them to be a part of our mission helped them and it helps us.'
Those visits would sometimes involve being in front of the camera. While playing at the Harvard-Westlake School in Studio City, California in 2022, Bythewood told the Los Angeles Times that he has had small parts in his parents' films over their careers, though he doesn't have any acting credits to his name on IMDB.
'It's really cool when I get to see myself on the big screen,' he said. 'Pretty surreal.'
He isn't the first UCLA athlete in his family, either. Prince-Bythewood was on the Bruins' track & field team while studying film at the school.
Toussaint Bythewood stats
This season, his third with the program, Bythewood is hitting .313 with five hits, five RBIs and one double while appearing in 21 games, which have included three starts.
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