Our baseball team took 2 of 3 from Gonzaga last weekend and hammered previously undefeated Indiana State, 20-4, then took care of business against the Evansville Aces yesterday at the Hawk, 7-3. We have a huge weekend at the 2024 Astros Foundation College Classic in Houston at Minute Maid Park as we face Louisiana on Friday at 3:05 PM, Houston on Saturday at 11:05 AM, and finish off the Classic versus Texas at 11:05 AM on Sunday. All times are central. We’ve really been hitting the ball well lately. Love our freshmen and sophomores on the mound and at the plate. Camden Kozeal, our freshman DH, is a hitting machine. Jacob Humphrey has stepped in in right field and given us an electric dimension in the lineup at the top of the order. Jason is a frosh, too. Tremendous right fielder and speed guy. Made a beautiful diving catch going to his left and then launched a deep on to right central all in the first inning. What a talent. Freshman second baseman Jayden Davis has a very nice stick as well. Sunday, our defense let us down. After going up 7-1, we committed two errors in a row and it was really three as shortstop Jonathan Vastine made a nice stop at short and made a flip to Davis for the force and the start of a 6-4-3 twin killing that would have gotten us out of the inning, but Davis couldn’t handle it unfortunately. I really felt bad for our freshman pitcher, Alex Kranzler. Alex was throwing strikes and should have gotten out of the inning. But after the errors, Alex gave up a grand slam. But I really like him a lot. He was very unlucky on Sunday due to some questionable defense. Still our team can hit a lot of singles and extra bases, we’re a prolific base stealing team, and we’ve got underrated power. We’ve got four guys, senior Troy LaNeve, Kozeal, Davis, and, if he can crack the lineup, Braden Holcomb, who can all hit double digit homers. Our pitching could very well be exceptional. With juniors Carter Holton, who looks fully healthy now and was outstanding last Friday versus Gonzaga, and Devin Futrell, who is a terrific Sunday starter who could be a Friday Night starter for a lot of teams, we look super with those two studs. We need a Saturday guy. I wouldn’t be opposed to using Futrell on Saturday and maybe Andrew Dutkanych on Sunday, or Andrew on Saturday and Devin on Sunday. Bryce Cunningham needs to keep developing, and the junior needs to do it sooner rather than later. Bryce has good stuff and can hit mid to high 90’s, but needs to work on his control. Ethan McElvain, Chris’s younger brother, looks like he could be a heckuva closer for us as a freshman. His stuff is electric. We’ve got a terrific freshmen class, key sophomores in RJ Austin, Chris Maldonado, who’s a little banged up, and Dutkanych. Davis Diaz needs to get his bat going, but he’s a solid junior third baseman. I see him being a .300 hitter if he can get it together, and he needs to sharpen up his defensive skills. Love Jonathan Vastine at short. RJ is playing first for now. We can put him a lot of places. He looks pretty comfortable at first though. Senior catcher Alan Espinol is a very nice defensive catcher who has a solid bat and can help us in both areas. He’s a good leader for us as is Jack Bulger, who was knocking the cover off the ball until he got banged up last Sunday. Need Jack back.
Sowhat kind of team do we have? Can we go to Omaha and win it? I know we can. This weekend is critical for our team going forward. LSU, Florida, the team from the East, and others will be threats for sure, but I like the makeup of this team. If we can shore up our defense, and pitch well, which I know we will, this team can take it a very long way this season. More on Monday.
Men’s Basketball
Tremendous victory for the team Tuesday Night at Bud Walton Arena in Fayetteville. We won 85-82 with Ezra Manjon, who has been awesome this season despite the struggles of the team, going for 22. Ezra is spectacular and could quarterback us to some more victories as we tune up for the SEC Tournament the second week of March. Tyrin Lawrence, who has also been stellar recently, added 21 and 7 boards and Ven-Allen Lubin, our 6’8”, 210 power forward, finished with 19 and 12, a spectacular night. Ven-Allen is a sophomore.I like what our big three are doing. Would like to see freshman Isaiah West play more and see less of Jason Rivera-Torres. Isaiah just gives us that great athletic ability and defensive skill and he’s a good scorer. Jason, a freshman, could be good, but right now, his defense is just not cutting it. Would like to see Isaiah playing a key role in the game and late in the game. Confident in him. Evan Taylor always gives us good minutes.
It’s been a rough go this season as we all know, but maybe we can string together some victories to close out the season and get some momentum for the SEC Tourney at Bridgestone Arena March 13-17th, a Wednesday-Sunday sequence. We’ll have to play on Wednesday most likely, but it would be good for momentum for the program to come away with some victories here at the end. Our team needs it as does our coach. Want the players to be rewarded for their hard work. They haven’t thrown in the towel, that’s for sure. With Ezra, Tyrin and Ven-Allen, we’ve got three standout guys. Throw in Isaiah and Evan and that’s a nice starting five. We’ll have to have some guys step up from the bench.
LSU @ home Saturday at 2:30 PM CT on the SEC Network.
By the way our baseball team will be broadcast on Astros.com this weekend, the Houston Astros website. If you can’t get to it, I’ll have a report on the team and the basketball team on Monday.
Football
I’m going to get more in-depth on this next week, but I love what Clark did in recruiting this cycle, 2024. He got four, 4 stars led by all world safety Dontae Carter, and a tremendous transfer class with three quarterbacks led by four star Nate Johnson from Utah and high three star Diego Pavia from New Mexico State, who single-handedly annihilated Hugh and the Auburn Tigers last November on the Plains. We’ve got two incoming frosh quarterbacks who look promising, a good receiving class, frosh and transfers, and some more nice young and older players at needed positions. We’ve got some studs coming back led by all world safety CJ Taylor, and I really like the potential of corner Trudell Berry. He showed signs of being a spectacular player last season. He had a pick six for three yards in one game. Martel Hight will be a stellar corner as well. I like the talent we have on defense. We have some new coaches. Clark will coordinate the defense, and while I don’t love that, it can work. It’s worked for Andy Reid as an offensive guy with the great Steve Spagnola coaching the defense. You know how that’s turned out the last couple of years. I can’t believe Spags hasn’t been hired as a head coach. The NFL can do some really poor hiring, and he’s a guy who should get another shot if he wants one, which I imagine he does. Tim Beck comes over from New Mexico State as our offensive coordinator. He was awesome as NMSU, and he’s brought some players with him. Blake Berlowitz is another NMSU transfer at quarterback. Like our talent. The schedule’s tough, but isn’t it always? We’ll be good next season. I can see us going to a bowl game and building from there. Getting guys the extra practice is so critical to the next season and you get that by making a bowl. And going to a bowl is always a boon for recruiting. So that’s the goal. We’ll have our spring game in early April. I’ll have a date for you next week. We open with VA Tech at First Bank Stadium Saturday, August 31st. Can’t wait. Will give you some more intel next week.
Men’s Golf…
is stellar. Coach Scott Limbaugh has another team, led by our superb junior Gordon Sargent, that can certainly go the distance. Coach Limbaugh, like Coach Corbin, has the expectations through the roof every year because, like Corbs, he’s the best coach in the country. We recently won the Watersound Invitational at Shark’s Tooth Golf Club in Panama City and we’re playing in the Cabo Collegiate starting this Sunday and continuing through next Tuesday. We defeated several ranked teams at the Watersound and we’ll square off with several more at the Twin Dolphin Club in Cabo San Lucas, Mejico. Always love what Coach Limbaugh does and we can Never take what Scott and Corbs do every year for our school for granted. They’re the best.
Jackson Van Paris, Cole Sherwood, Matthew Riedel and William Moll round out a stellar starting five. We’ve got some young guns behind them who have super potential. So our golf program is and remains phenomenal. We’ve definitely got a shot to win it all at the Omni La Costa Resort and Championship Course in Carlsbad, Cali in late May at the NCAA Championships. Excited to see this team progress. As Coach Limbaugh and Coach Corbin always say, we’ve got a long way to go and a lot of improving to do. It’s a day to day thing with our great coaches. We’ve certainly got the talent on both teams to win it all in both sports.
The Women’s basketball team is trying to earn their way into a double bye for the SEC Women’s Tournament March 6th through the 10th at Bon Secours? Wellness Arena in Greenville, South Carolina. Sounds like a place you could get a really good massage at, but I digress. The women are 7-7 in the conference and 20-8 overall. We play @ Mizzou tonight at 7 CT on SEC Network+ and Sunday, we finish off the season versus Georgia at 1 PM at Memorial in SECN+. That’s senior day. The women have been tremendous this season and Coach Shea Ralph is really making an impact on our program. Love what Coach Ralph is doing. She’s outstanding and the future this season and beyond looks terrific.
More coming up next week. Have an awesome weekend. Anchor Down. Let’s get a lot of victories this weekend.