THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE POST-SEASON: A LOOK BACK AT LONG BEACH STATE

You get the feeling as we begin to size up the homestretch for 49er athletics that the issue for making noise in the postseason won’t be as much about finding some good wins as explaining bad losses.

2011 has not been all peaches and cream for the home boys and girls, they had to mix in some Mac and Cheese along the way. (Disclaimer: I don’t like Mac and Cheese but my niece Lauren likes it better than lobster.)

The baseball script is still being written. The Dirtbags have won two of three Big West series so far and if they win each of the remaining sets, starting again this weekend at Santa Barbara, the RPI should get them in, even finishing third in the conference. Their bad losses started early when the team dropped two games to Fullerton by one-run margins and had one win pilfered by bad umpiring in the middle game of the Oregon State series.

Women’s basketball had a couple of bad losses. The one on the court was 74-70 at Santa Barbara when they gave up a late lead. The other one was in the coach’s office when superstar freshmen guard Brandi Henton asked to be released to shop at fancier basketball boutiques.

Even tennis had some bad losses. The worst from a national polling perspective was the 4-3 defeat at so-so Boston College and the other might have been a 5-2 defeat to Notre Dame when the team was beginning to click on all cylinders. Kind of makes winning the post-season tourney essential since with their current RPI the at-large bid prospects are remote.

Softball, which like baseball just needs to win series the rest of the way out, plays at Cal Poly this weekend. Their bad beats were stumbles against Pacific (that 3-2 loss with that bad base-running moment) and one to CSUN. Last year’s pitching phenon Taylor Petty has a limiting injury but this year’s PP Erin Jones-Wesley is not only 16-4 on the mound but carries a nice bat like her daddy the old ‘Niner shortstop Bob Wesley. She has a .438 batting average and a .563 slugging percentage.  

The final stop on our tour of spring sports is men’s volleyball. Yes, they have their post season invite, they play Saturday night at Stanford in the MPSF tourney and yes they have beaten the Cardinal here and there. The dark spots in the past are a 3-2 home loss to Lewis, and here and there beats from UC Irvine and UCLA. The team is somewhat of an enigma winning when you don’t think they can and losing, well, you know what we mean.

VROOM-LESS DUST—The baseball boys had a sweep chance after a 12-inning pitching gem Friday night and 14 hits and rally time over the UCR Highlanders 7-5. Sunday, well all fell down in that ugly loss. This weekend the ‘Niners take on the chardonnay-sipping quiche-eating Gauchos at Santa Barbara, where their little yard gives up long balls easier than Blair Field. The bright spots last weekend were pitchers Drew Gagnon and Matt Johnson and hitters Matt Duffy, Ino Patron, Mike Marjama and Royce Murai. Matt Hibbert and Brennan Metzger both are perfect in the field, but everybody needs more consistency.

The ‘Niner tennis bunch gets a week off to plan for the future. The immediate future includes clearing off a space in the trophy room of their massive and luxurious tennis clubhouse and clipping from the press comments by opposing coaches. The latest clips came courtesy of Pacific Coach Bob Chiene who remarked after the Beach clinched their 4th straight regular season title on his courts, “I was proud of the way we competed against the best team in our conference… We were not intimidated and played to win. We were in position to win with the two remaining matches on the court when the match was at 2-3. We unfortunately let those two get away from us. This match, however, should give us more confidence to finish out the season. We will learn from our mistakes and get better by the time we play the Conference Championships in two weeks.” Okay coach, message delivered.

The other future planning is always about recruiting. Sometimes that means getting new kids and sometimes that means keeping some of the current stars who have been known to get the wanderlust look in their eyes, especially toward those big and nasty BCS schools who have fully-funded scholarships to dangle. 

Closing Quote—The last decade or so we kept giving you where-are-theys on Misty May.  Maybe this decade will be all about Danny Espinosa, or at least Espy and Tulo. Over the weekend, Espy was moved into the No. 1 spot for the Nationals and followed up a three-run homer in the opening game with a bases-loaded triple in the seventh inning of the second game that helped the Nats to a doubleheader sweep. “It was great to get this sweep,” said Espinosa, who had six RBIs in the doubleheader and seven in the three-game series sweep. “After we got the first game, we knew in here, we were talking, ‘We need to get that sweep. We need this game.’ And we went out there and played hard and things went our way.”