Short Hops
Apr 12, 2004 | Baseball
April 12, 2004
NEW ORLEANS, La. - Happy Easter! I hope all of you are enjoying your rare day off. I'm sitting here at my parent's house in Chalmette trying to digest all the food I ate today. Now that I look back, I'm glad we played two games on Saturday. I was able to go to Easter mass with my family for a change, and was able to go to a family Easter party. With baseball, trips to visit my relatives are usually few and far between; so, it was a nice surprise.
As you all know, we got off to a great start last week with a victory over the No. 2 ranked LSU Tigers at The Box. Brian Bogusevic dominated on the mound, and we were able to overcome a lot of hard hit outs off of our bats to squeeze one run across the plate. Joey Charron made things interesting in the ninth, but as he always does, he shut down the late Tiger rally. It wasn't without some Tiger fans' gripes in regards to the eligibility of our senior closer, though; I laughed when I heard one talk show the following morning claim that Joey Charron has pitched in every Tulane/LSU game since the Civil War. Either way, I'll take a road win against LSU any way we can get 'em.
However, we were unable to carry that momentum into Friday night's game against Louisville. We didn't come out too flat, but we didn't play the type of game we were capable of playing. We hit a lot of balls hard right at their guys, but we also didn't execute with runners in scoring position. Whenever a team has 12 hits and only two runs, it's not executing at an optimal level. Give credit to Louisville, though. They scored enough runs to support the great pitching effort by their Friday-night starter.
It stopped there, though. We made up our minds on Saturday morning that we would put Friday behind us and play the way we know how. Anyone who saw us play on Saturday could see that we dominated the Cardinals in both games. In my opinion, they were the two most complete performances of the year. We pounded out 23 runs on 36 hits, while only allowing four runs and committing no errors. It was a very fun day to be at the ballpark if you are a Green Wave fan.
Well, Tuesday night we finish off the Popeye's Cup series with UNO at Zephyr Field. It's a great opportunity for our team to show that we can play with the same intensity level no matter which team's in the other dugout. Then, we head to Birmingham this weekend to face UAB. We need to do a great job of staying focused this week and not let any of these games slip away from us.
I'll see you guys at Zephyr on Tuesday. Thanks for tuning in. I need to see if I can locate any leftovers.
Roll Wave,
Tommy
