It’s been a “miserable” week for Oregon baseball, head coach George Horton said. The Ducks have lost four of their past five games, including a two-game sweep from San Francisco at home.
In those games against USF, the Ducks were tagged with five errors and managed just 11 hits while scoring 5 total runs. Horton said his team “came apart a little bit.”
Then, No. 8 Oregon faced a red-hot California team that dominated the series right from the start. The Bears entered the series hitting .318 with 16 home runs and 121 runs scored. Oregon’s numbers were in their shadows.
And though the unranked Bears hit .255 as a team in the series, they managed 17 runs against the Ducks. Oregon hit .207 with 9 total runs.
“I’m going to take the bullet, you cruise along and you think you’re doing pretty good,” Horton said. “We didn’t see it coming, we thought we were working extremely hard. We got out coached.”
Oregon dropped from No. 8 to completely out of Collegiate Baseball’s top 25.
Returning to PK Park, Oregon’s competition doesn’t get any easier. The No. 11 Arizona State Sun Devils enter with impressive offensive numbers – .306 BA, 95 R and 43 extra-base hits.
But one factor that Oregon holds an advantage in is pitching.
Notwithstanding last week, Oregon still poses an impressive resume from its rotation. With a 3.12 ERA and 160 strikeouts in 179.0 innings, Oregon has held its opposition to a .223 batting average, while allowing 1.16 runners per inning.
Arizona State’s pitching, on the other hand, hasn’t found its groove.
The Sun Devils, who’ve only played in Tempe this season, hold a 3.31 ERA with 170 strikeouts in 163.0 innings. But in those 163 innings, Arizona St. allows an average 1.28 base runners per inning – 151 hits and 58 walks – and a .249 batting average against.
The Ducks took Monday and Tuesday off to study for finals. Horton thinks the time off will help his team. He said they are “a little worn out.”
Horton hopes his team builds off its win on Sunday, the single win Oregon took away from Berkeley.
Before Sunday’s game, Horton asked his “team to become little leaguers and told them (he’d) buy ice cream at the end of the game.”
Horton stayed true to his word after Sunday’s win, “within the rules, of course.”
In that final game of the series, Oregon’s offense peaked, recording eight hits and four runs. And Oregon’s starter, Jack Karraker, went four hitless innings to start the game.
There’s no word if ice cream will be around the Ducks’ locker room in the near future. But, ice cream or not, playing like kids is Oregon’s focus in their recovery from last week.
“There isn’t a group of athletes I’d rather go to work and try to turn this around with than this 2015 Ducks team,” Horton said.
Follow Andrew Bantly on Twitter @andrewbantly