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Baseball
team loses fourth-straight game, not yet time to panic That was never more true for TCU this season than it was this weekend. The top-ranked Rice Owls came to Fort Worth and shut down what was considered a rather potent offense. The Owls pitching staff made the TCU offense look quite meek. The Horned Frogs managed just four earned runs and hit just .187 in a three-game sweep. The TCU batting average entering the weekend stood at a mighty .330. Afterwards, the Frogs were still hitting well above .300 but had fallen to .318. On the other side of the ball, the Frogs’ pitching staff threw quite well for the most part, allowing just four earned runs in each of the first two games before losing game three, 7-1. So, after a 20-9 start, the Frogs, now 20-12, found themselves in the midst of a three-game losing streak, traveling Tuesday night to play a struggling Oklahoma Sooners club. Head coach Lance Brown said his team would either rebound or it wouldn’t. Depending on your definition of rebound, you could make a case for it either way. The Frogs offense showed signs of life early, but the pitching, that had been somewhat effective against Rice, was not so effective against the Sooners. Good pitching once again beat good hitting as the TCU offense disappeared in the final six innings of a 9-5 loss, the Frogs’ fourth straight. It’s easy to say last night’s game in Norman, Okla., was just another non-conference game. It would be easy to say that, for the most part, the starters didn’t play a lot of innings. But, no team goes into a game with the intention of losing its fourth in a row. The offense didn’t get a lot of help early from freshman starter Clayton Jerome. He spotted the Sooners four runs in the first inning, and the offense that had struggled so mightily against Rice was immediately fighting to come from behind. It’s safe to say that a team coming off facing Rice didn’t need to see an early deficit. However, the Frogs’ offense came through and eventually grabbed the lead, 5-4, in the top of the third inning. That’s about as good as it got, though. The Sooners would tie the game with an unearned run in the bottom of the third. Oklahoma tacked on two runs in the fifth and one run in both the sixth and eighth innings to finish the game. The TCU offense never really mounted much of a rallying attempt past the third inning. By no means is it time to start calling out the emergency watch dogs, but Brown must be at least a little concerned for the psyche of his offense. After all, Oklahoma was just 10-22 entering Tuesday’s game. The Sooners’ pitching staff had an ERA of 5.83. The Sooners have played a relatively tough schedule coming out of the Big 12 Conference, but they have seen two losing streaks of six games or more so far this season, including a six-game losing streak snapped against TCU. The Horned Frogs had two ways to go. They could have picked up a quality road win to help ease the pain of the series against Rice, or they could have lost their fourth straight and taken that baggage with them back into conference play against Nevada. For lack of a better over-used cliché, TCU has made its bed and now it must lie in it. Everything was right with the world for TCU baseball before Friday, now at 20-13, the Frogs travel to Nevada to face a team that has been playing very well as of late. They will play four games in Reno, Nev., starting with Thursday’s make up of an early-season rainout. The Wolf Pack has gone 13-3 since starting the season 5-11. That turnaround includes winning four of six against Fresno State. So, again, the Frogs have two ways to go. They can go to Nevada, erase memories of Rice and Oklahoma, win the series and increase their lead over the Wolf Pack for second place. Or, TCU can continue this downward spiral and give up second place with Fresno State also not far behind. Its’ not, by any means, time to sound the alarm as a state of emergency, but it’s safe to say that these four games against Nevada could be the defining moments of the season. I guess they’ll either rebound or they won’t.
Associate Editor Danny Horne is a senior broadcast journalism
major from Carrollton. |