After yesterday’s opening Conference USA tournament baseball games, only one thing is clear: if Southern Miss and Houston win today, then they’re playing for the C-USA title on Saturday game and none of Friday’s games will matter.
But the Rice Owls are hoping to derail UH tonight, which they can do by defeating the Cougars tonight. Rice won its game yesterday, an 11-3 victory over East Carolina, but since the game was an out-of-pod game, the Owls are trailing the Cougars who defeated Marshall 11-7 last night in a pod game.
Despite taking a 1-0 lead with a first-inning homer off of Rice starter Taylor Wall, the Rice-ECU was never in doubt. The Owls, behind the bat of Diego Seastrunk, scored three runs in the bottom of that inning and never looked back, winning 11-3.
Seastrunk accounted for five of the Rice runs with a first-inning
single, a two-run bases-loaded single in the fourth, and a two-run homer
in the eighth inning. Seastrunk once again had the joy of hitting
behind Rice’s stud batter Anthony Rendon, and has been the case lately,
ECU walked Rendon to get to Seastrunk. And has also been the case
lately, Seastrunk made them pay. Time and time again.
“I’m a
contact guy, and you’ve got to play the numbers,” Seastrunk said of the
strategy. “I mean, walking Rendon is kind of no big deal when you’re
hitting behind him all year, so you know it’s going to happen
eventually. You’ve just got to take it. Every time I get up there, I
just try to get a hit. There’s just no way around it. You have to
perform when you’re hitting behind that guy because they’re going to
walk him all of the time.”
Wall was effective, but not great,
getting the quality start by pitching six innings, but giving up three
runs and seven hits. Rice coach Wayne Graham said he saw some things in
Wall’s performance to encourage to him, but overall, he wasn’t pleased.
“Still
not what we’re looking for, really, because [Wall’s] not — the problem
is he’s not getting the ball inside,” Graham said. “And so they’re
taking — they got three runs, seven hits, and they hit about five other
balls right on the screws. So he’s got to get inside. Last year, when
he was on top of his game, and this year, when he was top of his game,
he throws the fastball inside some.”
And Wall wasn’t happy
either, but he found it to be a step forward.
“I thought I needed
to throw the ball in a little more, and it was running away from me on
some guys,” he said. “But for the most part, it was a step forward, and I
was pretty satisfied with the outcome.”
The Cougars took the
field as the visiting team last night, and they immediately stormed out
to a 2-0 lead, over the higher-ranked Marshall Thundering Herd. They
made that lead 4-0 after two innings, 8-0 after three, 9-0 after four,
and 11-0 after five. And with the way Michael Goodnight was pitching for
the Cougars, it appeared that the Cougars were just going to coast into
their match-up with the Owls tonight. That was before Goodnight, who
had a no-hitter through five and a three-hitter through six, tired.
Marshall
proceeded to beat up on Goodnight and three Cougar relievers, scoring
seven runs over the last four innings. But Mo Wiley was able to get the
final four outs and preserve the 11-7 win. The star of the game was
clearly Goodnight, who pitched his best game of the season since getting
the 1-0 win over Texas back at the Houston College Classic at Minute
Maid Park back at the first of March.
“He did a pretty good job
tonight,” Houston coach Rayner Noble said of Goodnight. “Anytime you can
limit the opposition to very few hits, which he did, you’re doing your
job, which he did. I think probably the heat and humidity jumped on his
back there towards the end of his performance, but he was exceptional.”
But
Goodnight wasn’t looking to take much credit for the win. He chose to
focus on the offense, saying his job was easy with such a large lead.
“Our
offense was clicking,” he said. “I was just trying to get us back in
the dugout as quickly as possible, that way our offense could score more
runs, and they did a number in the first four or five innings, and that
sealed the game for us, in my opinion….It’s easy to pitch up 11 to
zero. You just try to fill it up and get back in the dugout as quick as
you can.”
The pitching match-up tonight will be Rice ace Mike
Ojala against Houston’s William Kankel. For the Cougars to win, Noble
says that Kankel has to pitch an exceptional game. For the Owls, Diego
Seastrunk says that the Owls must maintain their focus and “play every
pitch like it’s our last.”
SOME MISCELLANEOUS GAME NOTES: The early game featured Southern Miss defeating Memphis 8-2 in a game
featuring four home runs. A Southern Miss win this afternoon against ECU
guarantees that they will be one of the teams in the Saturday night
championship game….If UH wins tonight, it’s 2-0 in pod play, and it
clinches. If Rice wins, then Rice has the lead in pod play, but they
probably won’t be able to clinch without beating Marshall on Friday
night…Southern Miss and ECU play at today 11 a.m, Memphis and Marshall
meet at 3 p.m., and the UH and Rice play at 7 p.m.
This article appears in May 27 – Jun 2, 2010.
