Dirtbags have high hopes this season for pitcher Ryan Strufing who got the win Sunday. Photo Courtesy of LBSU Media Relations.
11:30am | Good morning or afternoon. Please open your textbooks to the letter “M” — as in margins, momentum, mercy and well, we’ll figure out the rest later.
Professor Troy Buckley discussed Margins in his Blair field post game classroom Sunday, reflecting on winning the openings series of the season (first such accomplishment in four seasons- they beat Rice in 2008). The game scores were all one run–3-2 on Sunday, 7-6 on Saturday and a 5-4 come from ahead defeat on Friday.
Perhaps the most engaging of the Dirtbags may well be Ryan Strufing, the lanky blond haired lefty from Colorado who worked the tight rope for an offensively impaired Long Beach State assemblage. Strufing used his 6.2 innings of off speed mixtures along with RBIs from Brennan Metzger, Kellen Hoime and Juan Avila to take the lead 3-2. And then, everybody exhaled, and the Niners held on the rest of the way to clinch the season-opening series win over Virginia Commonwealth.
For the small-town sophomore from Niwot, CO (population 4800), Strufing loves Sundays (“I get to see all their batters and besides, it’s Sunday afternoon, what could be nicer?”). In 2011 he got nine starts (but a 4.7 ERA) and for a moment it looked like this year wasn’t going to be very promising. He gave VCU leadoff hitter Bill Cullen a triple to open the game but his defense came to work with a groundout, a fly ball to right nicely handled by Avila and another ground out.
On Saturday the Niners shook off a disheartening a late inning loss with a run in the eighth, and another in the bottom of the ninth. Trailing 6-5 after seven innings, the senior centerfielder Metzger tied the game in the bottom of the eighth inning after he singled was sac-ed to second in true Dirtbag fashion, went to third on a single by Jeff Yamaguchi, and scored on a sacrifice fly from pinch hitter Jonathan Kim. Good work by Kim that likely will earn him a start in one or more of the next couple of games.
Now about that Friday the 17th, well you know where I am heading. It looked good with a 4-1 lead and a nice set up inning by 6-7 strong man Josh Frye. The idea has always been to have a set upper followed by a closer. The closer is supposed to be Eddie Magallon off his nice stats last year. But Eddie took a shot off his leg, everybody got rattled, and LB lost their edge and the game.
Momentum is next on the “M” list. The puzzle is did that .03 bail-out bucket by Creighton ruin the men’s basketball mojo just as they head into a stretch drive with contests against teams that would like to knock the Niners—UCSB at home in a TV game Wednesday and Fullerton behind the Orange Curtain , also on TV in the last game before the Big West tournament.
“M” as in mercy rule is that odd term used in softball and the Beach gals have been on both sides of that deal several times already this season. With their #2 ace Taylor Petty still recovering from Pneumonia, Erin Jones-Wesley has been the go-to for Kim Sowder’s but it the early results have been erratic. LB lost an M rule game to North Dakota State 8-0, M-ruled Indiana 13-3 and then went back on the dark side again losing an M-rule game to Portland State 12-1. This weekend the action shifts to the desert for Cathedral City Classic.
Last of the twists and turns have to do with Long Beach State women’s basketball which has two new game dates. The Pacific at Long Beach State game has been rescheduled for Tuesday, Feb. 28 at 7 p.m. To accommodate that change, the Cal State Fullerton at Long Beach State game, originally scheduled for Wednesday, Feb. 29, has been moved to Thursday, March 1 at 7 p.m. (That date however is the same night as the Women’s Volleyball Banquet but you know being a 49er builds character.)
Saturday’s game was postponed due to a widespread travel party illness that hit the Pacific women’s basketball team this weekend.
Long Beach State (11-14, 6-6 Big West) returns to action next week when it heads to the Central Coast for its final regular season road trip. The 49ers are set to play at Cal Poly (Feb. 23) and at UC Santa Barbara (Feb. 25).
You can grab the rest of the sporting schedule from our “This Week” feature nearby in this section. Gas up and pick your favorite games–home and away