In the midst of all this basketball excitement, stadium news, and general Baylor Athletics awesomeness, I wanted to take a moment to recap the final week of Baylor Baseball's non-conference play.
After the team's strong start this season, the wheels came off a bit in the last week, getting us to Big 12 play with a respectable 11-7 record. The Bears went 2-3, losing to TCU, Michigan State, and UT Arlington and winning two games of a rain shortened series against Memphis.
The losses to Michigan State and TCU were at the tail end of a stretch where the Bears played 6 games in 6 days. That really stretches the pitching thin on any college team and can lead to struggles in run prevention. Because of that, I think we can look past this last week with a lot of optimism about conference play. Here's why:
As I've said before, the Bears have played a tough schedule thus far with 11 games against teams that made the NCAA Tournament last year, and 5 games against Top 25 opponents. Our overall record against those teams? 8-3. We're beating the teams that really matter.
Another important development has been our starting pitching. First, Josh Turley is throwing the ball like a man possessed. He went 7 Innings with 11 Ks and only 1 Run allowed against Memphis to follow up his 7 Innings with only 1 Run allowed against UC Irvine. It doesn't get much better than that. Second, Trent Blank has emerged as our true Saturday starter. Blank went 6.2 Innings with 3 Runs allowed and 6 Ks against Memphis after dominating UC Irvine with a 7 Inning 1 Run allowed performance.
That gives us an intimidating weekend rotation of Turley, Blank, and Kuntz. I wouldn't want to face those three in a series. Add that to the fact that our offense is producing around 5 runs a game, and we have the recipe for an NCAA Tournament season. I'm still going to do a Big 12 Primer for the start of conference play, but there has been so much going on in the Baylor sports world that I haven't gotten to it yet. I'm thinking next week. Hopefully, I can fit it in between our Basketball teams winning. Sic ‘em Bears!