waltgreenberg
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I Root For: Rice Owls
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RE: College baseball elsewhere (Feb. 16-18)
Aaron Fitt's writeup from last night's game...
https://d1baseball.com/at-the-ballpark/o...-thriller/
Quote:ORLANDO — On Feb. 17, 2017, Justin Collins had Tommy John surgery, which cost him all of his senior season of high school baseball. Exactly one year to the day after that low point, Collins got a chance to play the hero for Rice.
In his second career collegiate game, Collins started at catcher and hit cleanup for the Owls. He strolled to the plate in the eighth inning with his team trailing UCF 2-1 and a runner on first base, and with one swing of the bat, he changed the game. Collins ambushed a first-pitch Eric Hepple cutter that failed to cut, smacking it over the left-field fence for a no-doubter two-run homer that put the Owls ahead for good. The ninth inning provided more drama, but the Owls held on for a 5-4 win, one day after Chace Sarchet’s walk-off two-run homer had given them another comeback victory.
“The whole offseason, we just preached, never give up,” Collins said. “You saw last year the team did that, pretty much — they had to come from behind to win the conference tournament. That’s what we preached the whole offseason, and obviously it shows in the first two games, that we’re not gonna give up.”
The Owls weren’t sure what to expect from Collins in the short term when he showed up on campus in the fall, coming off Tommy John. In the long term, they expected him to be a star — a nimble blocker and soft-handed receiver behind the plate with some serious thump in his righthanded bat. It was just a matter of getting healthy and getting comfortable.
“He’s a good one. He was a prized recruit. We didn’t know how much he’d play this year because he had Tommy John, but thank God he played tonight,” Rice coach Wayne Graham said. “He’s gonna be a great catcher. He’s a freshman, he missed a lot of play, and now he’s back that good. He’s strong and he’s tough. He had a little loop in his swing in the fall, but he’s worked out of it. That shows you — we told him, and now I don’t see that loop. You don’t hit the ball that far with a loop in your swing. We needed it. That fired us up, didn’t it?”
Rice has played with abundant fire these first two games, and the dugout erupted after Collins’ blast. The ninth inning was an adventure, as UCF narrowed a 5-2 gap to 5-4 with three straight singles and two straight walks, but Knights stranded the bases loaded when shortstop Ford Proctor made a leaping catch on a little flare off the bat of Max Wood, setting off another Rice celebration.
Graham acknowledged that the bullpen is a work in progress, but he feels good about the pieces he has to work with. Garrett Gayle showed electrifying stuff Friday, and righty Jackson Parthasarthy came up big Saturday, taking over in the sixth and nearly carrying the Owls over the finish line before the Knights finally chased him in the ninth. Parthasarthy is a strike-thrower with a nice four-pitch mix, with good life on an 85-87 mph sinker runs in on righties, an effective slow curve at 72, a slider at 77-78 and a very good changeup at 72-74, though that last pitch wasn’t its best Saturday. “You know, he hypnotizes some hitters — the ball moves all the time,” Graham said.
Lefty Evan Kravetz has struggled with his control in the first two games, but he’s a big southpaw with an 88-90 fastball and solid slurve, and he’ll be fine. Roel Garcia faced one batter Saturday and walked him, but he’s another quality arm from the right side. That quartet figures to comprise the core of a bullpen that should stabilize over time.
But right now, Rice should be feeling good about the fact that it has demonstrated a knack for winning these white-knuckle affairs already. This team seems to have heart — in addition to exciting young talent — and that can go a long way.
Starters Deal For Owls, Knights
UCF lefthander Joe Sheridan (Aaron Fitt)
The late-inning theater overshadowed a wonderful pitchers’ duel between Rice righthander Matt Canterino and UCF lefty Joe Sheridan. The two sophomores traded zeroes for five innings, and the first hit of the game didn’t come until Rice’s Ryan Chandler hit a leadoff single in the fourth. Sheridan had retired all nine batters he’d faced before that, showing pinpoint command of a lively 86-89 sinker from a deceptive three-quarters slot, along with good tilt on his 80-83 slider. After Chandler’s single, he quickly got a fielder’s choice and a double play to end the inning, and he wriggled out of jams with more groundball outs in the fifth and sixth, demonstrating his characteristic poise in tight spots. He exited after six scoreless innings, having allowed just three hits and no walks while fanning four.
“He can really pitch,” UCF coach Greg Lovelady said. “It’s funny, when he showed up, and he was here as a freshman, he was here for summer school, and they’re going, ‘Oh, this guy’s a pretty good pitcher,’ and you look at him and he’s unassuming. But from the moment he stepped on campus, he’s never been scared. He’s the most competitive kid. It’s just sinker, cutter, slider, it’s just down in the zone, really hard, gets really bad contact, a lot of ground balls. He’s so competitive, he holds the running game, he’s got an unbelievable pickoff move, he’s super-athletic … He’s a dude, man. Just really, really hard to square up.”
Canterino, meanwhile, retired the first seven batters he faced before a one-out error gave UCF its first baserunner in the third. He struck out five straight batters early in the game, baffling some very good UCF hitters with a pair of devastating breaking balls. His 80-83 slider is simply filthy, and he can throw it for a strike or a chase pitch, sometimes with more downer action and sometimes with more lateral break. But he also has a quality spike curveball with big 12-to-6 break at 76-78, and he tends to bury that pitch in the dirt for a chase pitch. He relied heavily on his breaking stuff early in the game, but he also deployed a quality mid-80s changeup against lefties as the game progressed, and he flashed 94 mph heat early the game, then settled in at 91-93 over his 5.2 innings of work. He allowed just one hit and three walks while striking out eight, but a walk and ah it batsmen led to two UCF runs in the sixth, breaking the scoreless tie.
Rice righthander Matt Canterino (Aaron Fitt)
“Man, Canterino, he was unbelievable all fall,” said Collins, his catcher Saturday. “Obviously he had a heck of a year last year, he threw 96 innings as a freshman. This year, he’s been nothing shy of spectacular. I mean, he was just dotting up the strike zone. I don’t know how many hits he gave up, one or two maybe, but he was dealing tonight … He can either be effectively wild one day, or the next day he can hit every single spot. He knows how to get the job done. You hear him out there on the mound, he’s definitely gonna give it his best.”
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