P.S. - from the Fort Worth paper:
Oklahoma on Tuesday means trouble at TCU
Posted Tuesday, Apr. 26, 2011
Error-plagued TCU drops 8th straight to Oklahoma
By Gil LeBreton
[email protected]
Find your identity, TCU baseball coach Jim Schlossnagle told his team.
Forget last year's magical run to Omaha. Forget the upperclassmen that the Horned Frogs lost. Forget this year's preseason rankings.
"Write your own story," Schlossnagle told the Frogs.
Wise advice.
But for now, another rerun.
Oklahoma 7, TCU 4. It was another chapter in the continuing saga of the Frogs' frustrations against OU.
Over the past 12 months, the Frogs have defeated the likes of Texas, UCLA, Florida State, Texas A&M and Cal State-Fullerton.
But it's been four years -- eight meetings -- since TCU last defeated Oklahoma in baseball.
It's been two good teams. Nationally ranked teams. NCAA tournament teams. And last year, two College World Series teams.
Yet, between the white lines, the Sooners have come out on top eight consecutive times.
No, Schlossnagle said, the series with OU hasn't taken root inside his team's young heads.
"But it might get in mine," he joked. Schlossnagle said he can't explain it.
"It's been proven time and again, though, that how we do against Oklahoma has no bearing at all on the rest of our season," Schlossnagle said. "The reason is we continue to have good seasons, and we continue to lose to Oklahoma."
He probably has the right approach. Midweek contests in college baseball, however, often can be the bane of a team with postseason aspirations.
The weekends are usually reserved for conference games, and the pitching assignments are handed to the team's best pitchers.
In order to add some meat beyond its limp Mountain West Conference schedule, TCU has to fill its midweek nights with pedigreed opponents. The Frogs, for example, will play 14 games this season against Big 12 schools.
They stand 7-3 against the Big 12 after Tuesday night. And guess who two of the defeats have come against?
Coach Sunny Golloway's Sooners came into the game ranked No. 14 by Baseball America, No. 13 in the USA Today/Coaches poll, and as high as No. 10 by the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association.
Tuesday's win was their 30th against 11 losses.
The Frogs will board a plane and head to BYU for their three games. TCU is 13-1 in its last 14 weekend games.
On Tuesdays, foul things tend to happen. Long fly balls get tracked down by fleet OU outfielders such as Ricky Eisenberg and Eric Ross. First baseman Cameron Seitzer snares everything hit or thrown to him.
After Oklahoma jumped to an early lead, the Frogs narrowed the deficit to 5-3 when four straight loud outs seemed to sum up their night.
"We hit three in a row to dead-center field, right on the screws, and [Jantzen] Witte hits one to the fence in left, and they're all caught," Schlossnagle observed.
Over the middle innings, however, after TCU had started to find its stroke against OU starter Bobby Shore, Golloway brought in freshman left-hander Dillon Overton.
"He shut us down," Schlossnagle said of Overton's four innings. "I thought it was the difference in the game."
His Frogs, he knows, have come a long ways since their early season bouts of inconsistency. He's learned who his No. 1 catcher is, for instance, and who can do what in his bullpen.
A turning point in the team's confidence probably came in early April, when catcher Josh Elander beat Air Force with a home run in the bottom of the ninth.
"Until then," Schlossnagle explained, "it seemed as if every close game, we lost.
"Just stringing together some victories allowed us to regain some confidence."
The loss to ranked Oklahoma didn't help the Frogs' postseason chances, but as Schlossnagle said, "We just have to put ourselves in position to be in a regional with as high a seeding as possible.
"And have our pitching lined up."
In the end, Schlossnagle hopes, this team will forge its own identity.
"We're getting closer to that," he said. "As I've told them, 'Write your own story.'"
And there are enough weekends between now and Omaha for that.
Gil LeBreton, 817-390-7697
Read more: http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/04/26/3029167/oklahoma-on-tuesday-means-trouble.html#ixzz1KjVRv14t