hanging on by frayed threadBallgame, 11–3 final.
Fordham is up 7–0 on Mason in the 5th. If they hang on to win, they will have the inside track on one of the two tourney spots as they beat the other three of us in regular season play.
Dayton surprisingly trailing Bona again, 4–1 in the 4th.
SLU and GW don't play until tonight.
We're not dead yet, but could be by the end of the evening.
“I think that it will be probably with me all summer and well into next year, and hopefully out of my system by the time we start playing again,” second-year UR coach Mik Aoki said Monday. “As the head coach, I need to take basically all of the responsibility for maybe not having prepared us for the downs that happen during the course of any baseball season, or probably any athletic season, right?” [...]
“For us, those ‘downs,’ I think, sort of started at Saint Joe’s,” said Aoki. “I think the guys just started to feel, like, ‘Oh my gosh, we just lost two games.’ Even at the end of that weekend, we’re still 4-2 (in the A-10). I think it was like sort of living up to the expectations. I don’t know that we necessarily handled that very well.
University of Richmond second-year baseball coach Mik Aoki, on the Spiders' uneven season: “I think that it will be probably with me all summer and well into next year, and hopefully out of my system by the time we start playing again."
“And then we went just through a little bit of a rocky stretch. Our pitching wasn’t quite as good as it was at the early part of the year. I think our hitters started to press. Then our pitching kind of got back on track, but by that point, I think our hitters were a little bit out of sorts.
“We just never seemed to kind of get over the hump.”
“It’s a group that I really, really enjoyed being around. It’s a group I care for deeply,” said Aoki, the former coach at Notre Dame, Boston College, Morehead State and Columbia. “It was an incredibly talented group, but it was almost sort of a feeling of they wanted something so badly they couldn’t quite let go.
“It comes from a good place. They wanted this so badly. They knew that they were really good. In spurts we did, but I don’t know that we just played an entire six- or seven-game stretch just completely free and loose once the conference started ... and then time becomes your enemy. Every passing weekend, the pressure sort of ratchets up.”
Aoki is left weighing the value of a very unusual season. Every metric improved from last season, his analysis indicates, the Spiders won 33 games, and at least three or four UR players this season probably earned a draft position or an opportunity play professionally at some level.
“You try to take your lessons. On my 30-minute ride back home down to Chesterfield, or if it’s a two-hour trip to go watch a kid play, or in the quiet moments of the summer when I’m by myself, these are the things that will rattle around in my brain for a while,” said Aoki.
How would you say light years ahead? We missed out on a 7 team playoff in the A10, a conference that isn’t exactly that strong in baseball. We are also losing a lot of talent both pitching and hitting wise. We have a great class coming in on paper but who knows how that will translate on the field. Disappointing season is an understatement.Disappointing, yes.
Big picture, our program is light years ahead of where it was when he took over and should continue to improve.
As I have said before, with our student demographics baseball is a sport we can excel in, with the right institutional commitment and quality coaching.
Pitching better but still lot of room for improvementDisappointing, yes.
Big picture, our program is light years ahead of where it was when he took over and should continue to improve.
As I have said before, with our student demographics baseball is a sport we can excel in, with the right institutional commitment and quality coaching.