Tigers' baseball heads to Miami
Pitching is a key component for the baseball team.
Published Feb. 6, 2007
MU's baseball team is headed to Miami this weekend for its season opener on a field not covered in snow, against Florida International University. The team is excited to escape the freezing weather but is even more excited to see what it can do.
"It's very exciting," pitcher Rick Zagone said. "I just want to see what we look like. It's hard to tell because we've been playing indoors for so long, and I haven't seen an actual game since the fall."
Zagone and fellow sophomore Aaron Crow will lead Missouri's pitching staff, and like Zagone, Crow is thrilled to start the season.
"I'm real excited to get out of this weather and finally getting to play outside and play against somebody else," Crow said. "I'm tired of facing (John) McKee and (Jacob) Priday the whole time. I'm just excited to face somebody else and be outside."
After a roller coaster ride last season, with MU advancing to the NCAA Super Regionals, the Tigers are ready to start another push for Omaha, Neb. Last season, the Tigers entered play at No. 10 in the nation but aren't ranked this year.
"It doesn't matter right now (what we are ranked)," junior Brock Bond said. "The only thing that matters is where you're at in June."
Crow echoed his teammates opinion and actually welcomed the lack of a ranking as a relief.
"It helps you relax a little bit," he said. "There's no pressure on you at all. You can just come in and play your game, you don't have to feel like you're a target as one of the top teams in the country."
But coach Tim Jamieson has some kinks in the pitching rotation to work out.
After losing two top pitchers to the pros, the quality of Tiger pitching has been unsure and will be the team's biggest obstacle.
"Rick Zagone and Aaron Crow are really the only two returning starters, so we're going to lean on them pretty heavily," Jamieson said. "Beyond that, that's what the first two or three weekends are going to be used for — to give guys opportunities and see who responds the best."
Two candidates up for a place in the rotation are newcomers freshman Kyle Gibson and sophomore Ian Berger. Gibson boasted a 0.98 ERA in high school as well as 140 strikeouts.
Although pitching seems uncertain, the players are confident.
"We're excited," Bond said. "We had some questions coming in after fall ball, but as of late, everybody has looked great. We lost a lot of great players last year, but we're confident with the guys we've got coming in that they will step up and be a big part of this season."
Jamieson said he believes the team could actually be better than it was last year.
"I think we're going to be better there than most people think because these guys are potentially a better offensive and defensive team than we were last year," Jamieson said. "That can be great, but it still comes down to pitching."
The team is still quite young, which is another concern for Jamieson.
"Most of those guys (who left the team) had been to three regionals and been to Big 12 tournaments," Jamieson said. "You can't replace that. You can replace the talent, but you can't replace the experience. So we have to rely on the guys that have been there to help the guys who haven't been there."
But at the end of the day, baseball is baseball, as junior Evan Frey points out.
"Anything's possible in the game of baseball," Frey said. "The ball's the same, the bat's the same, we just have to play the game."
