NDSU at ORU

[Old Titan]

It has been my experience over the years that college teams are only as good as their leaders on the field/court/etc., outside the coaching staff.

Particularly teams that unfathomably combine big wins over ranked opponents with head-scratching failures to appear vs. middling competition.

This year's ORU baseball team currently stands as a poster-child definition.

Until/unless the players take ownership of their fate, expect maddening inconsistency to reign.

[theeagleman5]

Four runs in the last 24 innings vs. mediocre NDSU pitching at home says it all....and this was after scoring 15 vs. #3 ranked OSU on the road just a few nights earlier.....TheEagleman is just SMH.....Coaches surely have to do a better job but they must be frustrated with this team which doesn't seem to hit it the clutch or show a lot of emotion.........we need to focus and get Ws on the weekends from here on out or ORU will be sitting at home in June......

[TrueBlue82]

19 hours ago, Bogus Smith said:

However, it is the coaches' responsibility to prepare the team for its opponents and the conditions they play in for winning the game(s).  I didn't see any adjustment to how our players were hitting this weekend to counter the 30+ mph winds.  We kept hitting them high and long (keeping held up in the wind) instead of on the ground or down the lines.  No small ball in the later innings when the score was 2-1.  They pitched slow and didn't ask for time in the box to change up the rhythm of the pitcher.  Those in-game adjustments need to happen and the players were not being coached to win in hopes that whatever they had done in the past would help them prevail.

In Saturday's pre-game chat with Adam, Coach Folmer talked specifically about the wind and the adjustments that would need to be made at the plate.  Our guys just didn't execute the plan.  It is very possible that the team was over-confident after scoring three runs in three consecutive innings on Friday night, and thought that they could sleep-walk through the DH.

As disappointed as I am in our team and Saturday's outcome, I think we also need to tip our cap to NDSU.  They came in to Tulsa, played fundamental baseball, and won the series the right way.  They are now 23-13 on the season, AND HAVE YET TO PLAY A HOME GAME!  They have already won two series (against St. Thomas and Omaha) that were supposed to be played in Fargo, but were moved to their opponent's field due to weather.  If NDSU wins the #1 seed for the tournament and the right to host next year's tourney, they definitely will have earned it!