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March 2, 2007 > Sports > Baseball travels to California

Baseball travels to California

By Ben Jedlovec | Thresher staff

With two outs and the score tied 2-2 in the bottom of the ninth inning of Friday’s game against Florida Atlantic University at Reckling Park, it looked like nothing could go right for the baseball team. Junior centerfielder Tyler Henley had just been tagged out on a botched suicide squeeze play, an apparent waste of another Rice scoring opportunity in the midst of an exciting pitcher’s duel. After junior leftfielder Jordan Dodson reached on a double to right, FAU brought in left-hander Joel Schmal to face junior cleanup hitter Joe Savery.

Then the offense, which has struggled since the start of the season, woke up.

“He was trying to get me to hit the curveball, so I was sitting on that,” Savery said. “He sat one in there, and I finally put a good swing on a ball.”

Reading it perfectly, Savery deposited Schmal’s third pitch over the centerfield wall for the walk-off win, and the Owls’ offense never looked back.

Rice (9-4) followed up Friday’s thriller by knocking off 19th-ranked Nebraska University 9-5 and Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi 14-1 during the Rice Invitational last weekend. The Owls finished off the perfect 4-0 week with a 6-3 victory over Sam Houston State University in Huntsville Tuesday.

Still ranked sixth by Baseball America, Rice will take its seven-game winning streak to California this weekend for a three-game series with No. 10 Cal State Fullerton University. The Owls then return home to face St. John’s University Tuesday and will wrap up Midterm Recess in Corpus Christi with games against Texas Christian Univesity, Texas Tech University and TAMU-CC.

This weekend’s series will have the attention of the college baseball world, as two recent College World Series champions square off. Rice took two out of three games against CSF in last season’s memorable series at Reckling Park, which featured a walk-off home run from third-baseman Josh Rodriguez and outstanding pitching performances from Savery, junior Cole St. Clair, Eddie Degerman (Sid Rich ‘06) and Bryce Cox (Wiess ‘06). Head coach Wayne Graham said he expects another close weekend.

“There’s no doubt that Fullerton’s one of the premier teams in the country,” he said. “They have an inexhaustible supply of experienced players … and they’re going to be playing at home.”

Sophomore second baseman Aaron Luna led last week’s offensive change. Luna went 7 for 18 over the last five games, homering once, driving in four runners and scoring six times. Although he took Conference USA Hitter of the Week honors, Luna said he is just glad the team is hitting well again.

“Coming in here, we knew we were going to face some good competition,” he said. “We wanted everyone to relax and get back to what we were doing last year. We’ve had a lot of guys pressing, trying to get two hits in one at bat, and the averages are kind of in the back of everybody’s mind.”

Other offensive standouts included Henley, Dodson, and freshman third baseman Diego Seastrunk. Henley went 4 for 16 on the week and was also hit by two pitches, bringing his season total to eight. With one more HBP he will reach 50 for his career, surpassing Chris Kolkhorst for the university record. Dodson went 5 for 11 on the week, including two homeruns, six runs batted in and three runs scored in Sunday’s rout of TAMU-CC.

Seastrunk took advantage of his starting opportunities to go 6 for 13 during the Invitational with a homerun and a double, two RBIs and four runs scored.

“I wanted to take advantage of every at bat, taking it like it was my last,” Seastrunk said. “Approaching it like that makes you really bear down and focus on each pitch.”

Somewhat overshadowed by the offensive outburst, the Owls pitching staff continued to baffle opposing hitters. On Friday, junior starter Chris Kelley went six strong innings, allowing only two runs and striking out five, but the win went to junior Bobby Bramhall, who threw three perfect innings in relief, striking out two. Freshman Ryan Berry had a rough start Saturday against a strong Nebraska offense, but junior transfer Matt Langwell and senior Ryne Tacker effectively shut down the Huskers, combining for 7.1 innings in relief. The two allowed a combined three hits and let the Owls offense take back the game.

Graham said Berry will benefit in the long run from his bad outing.

“He’s a command guy, and he had no command,” he said. “He lost the tilt on his slider, he left pitches up. It’s probably a good lesson for him.”

Lefty Savery went a season-long five innings on Sunday, picking up his team-best third win.

“I got out of some jams,” he said. “I was happy with the way it ended up turning out, but I don’t think my command was very good.”

Berry started again on Tuesday, erasing some of the memory of Saturday’s rough outing with a solid 3.2 inning outing, allowing only three hits, no walks, and one earned run. The improvement was clear when Berry struck out the side in the third, showing good command of all of his pitches. In relief, junior Scott Lonergan and Bramhall shut out the Bearkats to hand the Owls their seventh win in a row.

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