We've been back from our southern trip to Georgia and Florida for almost a week, and we've had a pretty good week of practice in preparation for next weekend's trip to northern Kentucky for a couple more games before we commence with the rest of our season here in Michigan. Today we began our northern JV schedule with two games and we have two more JV doubleheaders the next two days. Coach Nate Sarkissian's squad played well and won a couple games today against Muskegon Community College by scores of 3-2 and 10-0.
I have been wanting to update the blog all week to quickly recap our trip, but it seemed that every night I sat down and it wasn't long before I was looking at the backs of my eyelids. Regardless, after a day outside in the cold wind, being in the dugout for fourteen innings has renewed the hunger for competing against other teams again.
There were a few interesting things that happened in Georgia and Florida. We defeated the nation's #4 team (Christopher Newport University) as well as the #15 team (Piedmont College) on back to back days. They are now ranked #3 and #10, respectively. In Florida, we played a couple crazy games against Capital University in Port Charlotte. On Thursday we won in eleven innings by scoring ten runs in the 11th. Then on Friday Capital turned the tables on us and had a ten run inning of their own in coming from behind and beating us 13-10 for our only loss of the trip.
In last Saturday's game, Jason Fryman started the game by throwing nine pitches in the first inning, all strikes, and struck out all three batters. Not a fair ball was hit in the inning. I can't say that I recall that happening before in any of the 1200 or so college games that I have coached.
On Friday in Port Charlotte, we were able to see Michigan and Ohio State play each other and also see a few innings of the Northwestern vs. Western Michigan game. The Buckeyes won the game 8-4. In talking to our pitching staff, I was glad that they noticed a couple things about the DI games. One of the things that we talk about multiple times on a daily basis is for our pitchers to try to throw their pitches on a downhill plane. Some of them do a pretty good job of it, but some don't get on top of the ball as consistently as we would like them to. For them to be able to visually notice the DI pitchers throwing downhill consistently was a good thing, and that served as one of our main pitching themes this week during practices.
Our players have done a pretty nice job so far, but we really do have considerable room for improvement. We improved in the national rankings, but that doesn't mean a whole lot to me at this point in the season. It will mean something around Memorial Day weekend if we can continue to become a better team each day and week in the next couple of months. So far, we are doing a fair job in trying to achieve some of our pitching staff statistical goals, but we still need to get better at throwing first pitch strikes and getting leadoff batters out. And perhaps most importantly, we must improve on taking care of damage control.
As for the trip, I'm glad I won't have to spend twenty straight hours on a bus again for a while. I must be getting old!
I have been wanting to update the blog all week to quickly recap our trip, but it seemed that every night I sat down and it wasn't long before I was looking at the backs of my eyelids. Regardless, after a day outside in the cold wind, being in the dugout for fourteen innings has renewed the hunger for competing against other teams again.
There were a few interesting things that happened in Georgia and Florida. We defeated the nation's #4 team (Christopher Newport University) as well as the #15 team (Piedmont College) on back to back days. They are now ranked #3 and #10, respectively. In Florida, we played a couple crazy games against Capital University in Port Charlotte. On Thursday we won in eleven innings by scoring ten runs in the 11th. Then on Friday Capital turned the tables on us and had a ten run inning of their own in coming from behind and beating us 13-10 for our only loss of the trip.
In last Saturday's game, Jason Fryman started the game by throwing nine pitches in the first inning, all strikes, and struck out all three batters. Not a fair ball was hit in the inning. I can't say that I recall that happening before in any of the 1200 or so college games that I have coached.
On Friday in Port Charlotte, we were able to see Michigan and Ohio State play each other and also see a few innings of the Northwestern vs. Western Michigan game. The Buckeyes won the game 8-4. In talking to our pitching staff, I was glad that they noticed a couple things about the DI games. One of the things that we talk about multiple times on a daily basis is for our pitchers to try to throw their pitches on a downhill plane. Some of them do a pretty good job of it, but some don't get on top of the ball as consistently as we would like them to. For them to be able to visually notice the DI pitchers throwing downhill consistently was a good thing, and that served as one of our main pitching themes this week during practices.
Our players have done a pretty nice job so far, but we really do have considerable room for improvement. We improved in the national rankings, but that doesn't mean a whole lot to me at this point in the season. It will mean something around Memorial Day weekend if we can continue to become a better team each day and week in the next couple of months. So far, we are doing a fair job in trying to achieve some of our pitching staff statistical goals, but we still need to get better at throwing first pitch strikes and getting leadoff batters out. And perhaps most importantly, we must improve on taking care of damage control.
As for the trip, I'm glad I won't have to spend twenty straight hours on a bus again for a while. I must be getting old!
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