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Baseball team continues follies
Young, inexperienced Huskies have head coach Denny Lorsung befuddled, but hopeful
By Ryan K. Dale
Published:
Thursday, April 24, 2003
Going into the four-game series with Nebraska-Omaha, the Husky baseball team was off to a disappointing 6-22 start to this season.
Inexperience, the weather and basic fundamental errors are some of the reasons for the poor start. Head coach Denny Lorsung is in his 25th season with the Huskies and said there are no excuses and that the team is playing far below his expectations.
"We never expected to have a winning season because we were playing with guys with so much inexperience," Lorsung said. "But we thought we would have won five or six more games than we have and that part has been disappointing."
Going into the season, Lorsung was hoping the team would play better than they have. The team knew they had a tough schedule in the NCC and knew they had to be on top of their game if they wanted to compete.
"You look at your opponents and think, well we can get a game in this series...or we might be able to win a couple this weekend," Lorsung said. "But, it just hasn't happened this year."
Teams like Nebraska-Omaha, MSU, Mankato and UMD have played well, but for the most part there hasn't been a dominant team. Northern Colorado got their fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh wins of the year against the Huskies and the teams mentioned above are beating the bottom feeders of the NCC.
Yet, SCSU still has been swept by all of these teams. Offensive struggles have hurt the Huskies. They rank last in the NCC in every offensive category except for walks (third) and stolen bases per game (fifth). When the Huskies do score early and get a lead, they have had troubles keeping it.
"We've scored first once or twice maybe," said Lorsung. "But, it's not like we get a five-run lead and we blow it. We get a one or two-run lead in the first inning and then we don't score again."
"That's been the issue with us. We knew we wouldn't be prolific offensively, but we've fallen even below those expectations."
The power is not there this season. Husky first baseman Joe Durham was expected to be the power hitter. This season he has yet to produce the numbers that the team needs to succeed. He is batting .333 with two homers and 18 RBI going into last weekend. Batting .333 would be an above average number in the big leagues, but not in the NCC.
"He's left a lot of people on base," said Lorsung. "But overall we're not bunching hits together and not hitting well as a team. Every day there's a guy or two that will have two hits. But to win, we need to have four or five guys get a couple of hits each game."
The pitching also has fallen below the radar.
"I can't say it's been as bad as our hitting," Lorsung said. "Some days they pitch well and other days, or even in a doubleheaders, we have a tendency to not pitch well in the first game and pitch well in the second. I don't know why that is."
There is a future for the pitching staff and they have some young talent they can build on. Two of those pitchers learned from their older brother.
Mike Hoelscher (Alexandria) is in his first year and is the brother of former Husky Nate Hoelscher, and the brother of current Husky sophomore pitcher, Matt. Although Mike has a 1-4 record and a 6.75 ERA, Matt is 0-0 with a 10.80 ERA.
The other problems plaguing the Huskies in 2003 are the defensive mistakes and the fundamental mistakes. The defense is the biggest problem in Lorsung's eyes.
"We don't have the range in the middle and we drop fly balls and pop-ups," he said. "That's inexcusable. An eight-year-old kid could catch a fly ball. You can't blame that on inexperience."
"In one doubleheader we played 14 innings without an error. In the last game against St. John's we had something like six errors. You can't use 'being young' as a crutch."
St. Cloud had to make a decision last year that has also affected this year's poor performance. They had to decide between going after junior college transfers, or playing freshman. They decided to play freshman. Lorsung hopes to build a winning future with them, hopefully as soon as next year.
"We can't get much worse than this," Lorsung said. "There's no question we'll be better next year. We have 17 games left this season if Mother Nature cooperates. If we play well, we can salvage this season. If not, than we throw it away and have to start over right where we began this year."
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