ORU Back To Form After Slow Start (TW)

[Bogus Smith]

ORUTerry's fallen down on the job here so I thought I would pitch in! You know it's a busy day for Terry if it's left to me to throw out an article from the Tulsa World!

ORU back to form after slow start

By JOHN KLEIN Senior Sports Columnist

5/19/2006

It has been a long time since Oral Roberts baseball found itself in such a big hole.

The Golden Eagles are usually among college baseball's most reliable winners.

Yet, as late as March 28, ORU was saddled with a losing record, at 10-11.

The season looked bleak. And, just ahead, were two of the college baseball's regional heavyweights.

"I just felt like we were unsettled because of our health situation," said ORU coach Rob Walton. "We not only had a lot of guys out with injuries, we also had so many new guys in the system.

"We didn't seem to have any direction."

Then, it clicked. The light went on and the Golden Eagles regained their golden touch.

During the first week of April, ORU beat Oklahoma State. Then, the following week, the Eagles beat Wichita State on back-to-back nights.

Suddenly, the tide turned and Oral Roberts now appears well on the way to yet another NCAA Tournament.

Oral Roberts, after a 13-2 victory over red-hot Oklahoma State on Tuesday night, has won 21 of its last 24 games.

ORU is 31-14, 13-2 in the league, heading into a weekend four-game Mid-Continent Conference series against Oakland at J.L. Johnson Stadium.

The Golden Eagles are the heavy favorites to be the top seed and eventual winner of the Mid-Con Tournament next week at ORU.

Oral Roberts, after stumbling out of the gate, is blazing down the home stretch.

"There's no question we're playing better now than we have all year," said Walton. "Where we're better is on the mound.

"This is when you want to play your best baseball."

But no one was thinking about a ninth straight appearance in the NCAA Tournament during the middle of this season.

The Golden Eagles started 9-3. They battled through nagging injuries and were trying to find a settled lineup.

Then came a trip to Tulane, ranked 12th in the nation at the time, and it seemed to turn the season in the wrong direction.

ORU lost two of three to the Green Wave. Then it lost six more, bringing its losing streak to seven.

"That's where it all started to go downhill," said Walton. "We only won one game down there. We should have won two.

"We were playing a very good club and with all of the injuries and new guys it kind of caught up with us. I knew it was going to take some time to get through the learning curve with our new guys. Then, we got the health problems. We just had multiple problems."

The Golden Eagles headed off to a West Coast trip with their top three pitchers and half the starting lineup battling a variety of health problems.

Plus, because of the unsettled situation in the lineup, there was considerable juggling of players.

The result was ORU lost all six of those games on the coast, three to California-Irvine and three more to San Francisco.

"We had a bunch of new guys pitching, and we had been really tested early by some good teams," said Walton. "We would play a guy and then sit a guy trying to play through these things.

"That was the worst of times for us. We didn't have any set roles. Few guys were set in our batting order. We really didn't have anything set on the mound. From a pitching standpoint, we really struggled."

The one thing ORU was doing right was at the plate. ORU was scoring runs and playing defense.

It just wasn't getting the pitching it needed to win games.

"That's when we started getting some guys back healthy," said Walton. "We still have some health issues on the mound but it is better. We're making it work.

"We had a lot of things we were dealing with about a month and half ago. We were going through those growing pains and all of that seemed to hit at the same time. We struggled and went through a rough period."

But the Golden Eagles got well against OSU and Wichita State. Then, it beat Arkansas, 14th-ranked at the time, earlier this month.

Suddenly, Oral Roberts seemed back to its normal self.

ORU, as usual, is running away with the Mid-Con regular season. It has lost just two Mid-Con games this season (just 20 Mid-Con losses in nine years).

"We always thought this team could be pretty good," said Walton. "We could always score and that was a good start.

"It was about gaining some team chemistry."

[ORUTerry]

Thanks Bogus..... I actually cancelled my subscription to the Tulsa World (the liberal bias just got to me) and that is why I have not posted any TW articles.

[Bogus Smith]

Good to know, Terry. We'll cover for you. I was just giving you a hard time, but didn't realize that there was reason that you weren't posting the article. Sorry if you posted that you weren't a subscriber in a previous post.