It’s playoff time in college baseball, and with one weekend left until the NCAA selection committee makes their picks for the 2010 tournament, the Oregon Ducks are hoping for one more strong series to cement their case for a bid.
“Control the controllables,” head coach George Horton said. “We have to get back to work and win baseball games. Hopefully we’ll be invited to go somewhere and we can handle our end of the bargain a little bit.”
Horton has the Ducks at 37-20, and the California Golden Bears (27-22, 11-13) are coming in for the final series of the year. Oregon is coming off a 2-1 loss to the Oregon State Beavers on Wednesday in Portland, and it left a bitter taste in the mouth of Horton and his staff, and they hope this weekend will leave a better view for the committee.
“My club and my coaching staff wanted to get this one,” Horton said of the game. “It’s the Ducks and the Beavers, with a lot of their fans and a lot of our fans. I’m not convinced that we’re in (the tournament). A lot of people think we are and we probably are, but we didn’t come after it and there are no excuses.”
Oregon was held to four hits, while the Beavers had 11, and the one-run loss ate at the head coach after the game. He talked to the media for 10 minutes, saying it was a “crummy” loss.
“All the maturity we’ve seen these guys establish kind of went down the drain tonight,” Horton said. “We’re lucky we were even in the game. It could have been 10-0 quite honestly.”
“I’m very disappointed we lost four of five … we just want to be the best baseball team we can be,” Horton said. “This is our rival. All due respect to the Beavers, they got us four out of five. We’ll have to wait until next year to establish that we can be more successful against them more consistently.”
Horton sees this weekend as a real chance for the Ducks to not only end the regular season with a winning record in league, but to also go into the tournament on high note.
“We’ll bounce back,” Horton said. “Fixing it is going to be about getting more locked in and more discipline … we’ll just try to get this series or all three of them and hopefully we’ll be invited to the dance.”
California comes in on a seven-game losing streak, and this weekend is just as important to them to prove that they are a playoff team. Horton said on Tuesday he thinks eight teams from the Pac-10 will make regionals (including Cal), but if the Golden Bears lose two of three this weekend then they could very well be on the way out instead of in.
That’s why the Ducks will not look past Cal. The Beavers improved their chances of making it into the tournament with the way they played against Oregon this week, and the Ducks don’t want to be the poster child for improving the bids of other teams.
“We can’t go into the weekend looking past it,” outfielder Curtis Raulinaitis said. “We have to go in with our motto, just keep grinding it out, one pitch at a time. Whatever
happens, happens. We can’t do anything different. We have to play our brand of baseball.”
“It would be immature and stupid to look past this weekend,” Horton added. “We can’t control what happens Sunday. What we can control is how we play this weekend and at least get two out of three. We’re 12-12 in conference and losing two out of three means we have a losing record, and having a losing record in conference isn’t what I came to the University of Oregon to do.”
Reasons like this show why Oregon hired Horton away from Cal State Fullerton. With the Titans from 1997-2007, Horton was 55-26 in the postseason, and his teams made 11 straight regionals.
Game one is Friday at 7 p.m., followed by game two at 6 p.m. Saturday, and game three at 1 p.m. on Sunday.
Marder returns
First baseman Jack Marder will return to the lineup on Friday against the Golden Bears after taking almost two weeks to recover from a concussion he suffered against East Tennessee State on May 14. He was cleared Wednesday.
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