Throughout the course of the 2011 season, MVNU senior pitcher Steve Miller will write a weekly blog about what is happening with the baseball team.

"Cedarville" (posted on April 26, 2011)

Well, this week was fairly upsetting for the Cougars. We had a four-game set scheduled with Cedarville, who is much improved this year, but due to the elements of Mother Nature and some stubbornness from our opponents, we were unable to play the final two games. We had a chance to play our games at home on Saturday since we have turf, but we couldn't convince Cedarville to make the trip up again. We moved the games from at Cedarville to home on Thursday because we knew we could get the games in since Cedarville's field would not have been playable.

Thursday was a bit disappointing as we only salvaged a split against Cedarville. They came out swinging and put five runs on the board in the first inning. We helped them out a little bit with a couple walks and could not seem to put together enough offense to mount a comeback. We scored one in the 2nd, 5th and 7th innings respectively. They put together a pair of two-run innings early and we just couldn't seem to get some timely hits and could not catch a break. They did not give us much defensively as they did not have an error and only gave up four walks. Jeff Stone was the lone Cougar with two hits and all of our six hits were singles.

After the game, Coach Veale mentioned that we did not play the game poorly, Cedarville did not play an amazing game, but they went out and wanted it a little bit more than we did and they were the ones who took the win. We did not give them much, but they just scored early and played well defensively. Our 12 or 13 pop-ups did not help the cause, but we knew we had to make some changes for the second game. If you are not much of a baseball junky, catching a fly-ball is much easier than fielding a hard-hit groundball and making a throw to first base. You have to field the ball which is a higher difficulty and then make an accurate throw before we beat out the throw. We just could not keep the ball on the ground to make Cedarville make harder plays. This is something that proved vital in the second game.

Jerrob Decker threw a great game in game two with six innings on the hill and Darren Athey closed it out with a 1-2-3 inning for the save. We had one breakout inning in the 5th as we scored all of six of our runs and Cedarville helped us out big time. Overall they had five errors in the game and only two of our six runs were earned. At one point, it was like a circus with the ball being thrown around the infield and the umpires not knowing what was going on, but things got sorted out enough and we ended up winning the game. Jordan Doherty and Steve Williams both had two hits and Jordan should have had another one if it wasn't for a botched call by the umpires who stood around talking with each other, and having coaches from both sides arguing in their favor trying to figure out what was going on. But in the end, justice prevailed and all was good as we got a much-needed split to stay in first place in the conference.

We now have six games in three days starting with Cedarville on Thursday and then Malone on Friday and Saturday. The games are away, home, away respectively and we have a long way to go to insure we get a spot in the conference tournament and an even longer way to go to make sure we stay atop the standings and get a chance to host the tournament.

Keep cheering us on in the final week of the season and thanks again for all the support. Go Cougs!

"Touch 'em All with Steve Miller" Complete Archives