When asked at Thursday’s practice whether the recent stretch of games has been the best baseball he’s seen of the year, Oregon head coach George Horton was quick to answer.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s been a fun ride or fun train.”
Right now, the Ducks (25-12) are rolling. They’ve won four of their last five games, three straight series — two of which were against ranked teams — and the offense is clicking.
It’s a significant turnaround from the team that a year ago could barely scrape together one win, let alone a series win.
“I’m having a blast — 180 degrees over how I felt last year,” Horton said. “Not just because of the losses, but the culture was just so far off.”
“Our chemistry is better,” sophomore shortstop KC Serna said. “We’re shoulder to shoulder, and we just have a lot more fun.”
Serna, who hit two home runs this week in two games against the Gonzaga Bulldogs, said he hasn’t even thought of how he’s hitting this year (.331), and Wednesday’s 19-10 rout of Gonzaga proved it. Oregon exploded for 25 hits to tie a record for most all time in program history.
“I haven’t thought about it too much,” Serna said. “I was just thinking more about how many hits we had as a team. We put a lot of runs up on the board. I felt more pumped about that than my two home runs. It was cool to see.”
Because of Oregon’s series win over No. 1 UCLA last weekend, the Ducks come in to this weekend’s games with USC ranked No. 18 in the nation by Baseball America. All of a sudden, the Ducks find themselves with the spotlight on their backs.
It’s an unfamiliar role for most.
“My discussion with them has been it changes the role and responsibility of how you perform,” Horton said. “You have the bull’s eye and people are shooting at you.”
“It’s an area I’m familiar with, being at the top and being aimed at,” Horton added. “But it’s unfamiliar waters for this group. But like everything else, they’ve trusted me, and I’m going to sit back, fasten my seatbelt and see how they respond to this favorite role.”
The biggest improvement for the Ducks right now is the hitting. Even last year the pitching was always at the top of the league, but the hitting was atrocious.
In the last month of the season, the Ducks scored five runs just once. This year, Oregon has scored five or more runs six times in their last eight and 24 times so far this season.
“It’s never really where you want it to be, but we have taken huge strides from last year,” outfielder Curtis Raulinaitis said. “We’re getting more timely hits and we’re being more patient.
“We are meshing well. We have really good chemistry. Hitting is kind of contagious. When the guys in front of and behind you are doing well, you want to join the crowd.”
The Ducks hope for a larger crowd this week, and they will most likely get it, playing at PK Park for the first time as a ranked team. But the team won’t forget last year, when the Trojans swept them in Los Angeles. USC may be last in the conference right now at 2-10, but the Pac-10 is never safe.
“We got our rear ends handed to us against this particular group down in Los Angeles last year,” Horton said. “They are probably underachieving a little bit compared to their tradition, and we’re probably overachieving a bit.”
So for now, the mentality doesn’t change. The Ducks will continue to stay in the moment, having fun and continuing to view themselves as the underdog.
“We just keep doing what we’re doing,” Serna said. “Keep our eye on the prize, and that’s Omaha … sure it’s our main goal, but we’re not going to look past any team.”
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