Charles Fischer

Gauchos win 8-2 as my "pitching depth" did not deliver today. Ugly.

8-2 Gauchos after eight innings. Oregon did nothing at the plate, and our pitchers of Blake Crawford, Leo Uelmen and Cooper Markham gave up hits, walks, plinked batters and the floodgates opened against the good-guys.

4-2 Gauchos after seven innings. Oregon is being tortured by opposing pitchers today, as their reliever is pretty darn good. The Ducks new pitcher brought in, RS Freshman Blake Crawford, who had only pitched three innings this year, but must have inspired the confidence of the coaches. He delivered with a scoreless inning.

4-2 Gauchos after six innings. Nothing from our batters, but Michael Meckna came in to relieve Clarke and did well with a 1-2-3 inning.

4-2 Gauchos after five innings, as the Santa Barbara pitcher finally tired. With two outs--a flurry of four Oregon hits began. Ryan Cooney got a hit with a grounder up the middle, and Jax Gimenez got a hit through the right infield, while Cooney put on the jets to move to third. Then Dominic Hellman drove a hit through the right infield as well to score Cooney, and put Gimenez on third. Drew Smith then hits to mid-CF to score Gimenez! Then Collin Clarke got tired. Bottom line is that he gave up a slew of hits to allow two more runs.

2-0 Gauchos after four innings. Our Beloved Ducks are facing a pitcher who is hot-hot-hot... Collin Clarke gave up a walk, but closed them down after that. He is not at his best today, but more than good enough to keep them scoreless.

2-0 Gauchos after three innings. Ducks got things going at bat, but stranded two on base.... Collin Clarke was not happy after last inning, and put them down 1-2-3...

2-0 Gauchos after two innings. Ducks can't hit this opposing pitcher yet. Collin Clarke gave up a hit, but then self-inflicted wounds began. He plinked a batter to have two on base, then an error by the 2nd baseman allowed a run to score...and then a wild pitch scored another run for UCSB.

0-0 after one inning. Ducks went down a bit too easy as batters, and Collin Clarke had two on base, but got out of it.

I don't know which pitcher Oregon will face, but it will be between Nathan Aceves, (3.77) and Kellen Montgomery (3.86) of the Gauchos. We counter with Collin Clarke, (2.79 ERA) and it figures to be another low-scoring affair unless the Ducks can get the pitch count high enough to get their starter out. It is hard to know if the offensive woes yesterday by Santa Barbara were due to a batting lineup in a slump, or if the pitching they faced was that good. Their starter was impressive, and our runs were scored on relievers. I do believe today, as yesterday, that we have a better batting lineup who can break through sooner in the game. But you know how it goes...it all depends on how that pitcher is doing today. Sometimes we get snuffed by a pitcher in the high3s for ERA, and other times we have beat them up. And that is what makes the game so interesting to watch! Today you will see a ton of a pitch you rarely saw yesterday; the change-up, and Clarke has a few variations that are darn hard to hit. He has a tendency to give up home-runs, but often--that is all they get, hence the low ERA. Collin Clarke

The resentment is strong, and the fact that Oregon won the most Big-10 championships in all sports, (considering we only have 18 of the 28 B1G sports) enhances that bias against us. The recent baseball polls with three west coast teams on top of the B1G...

They did not have videos available during the game, so a couple are now showing up. Good Stuff!

Thought You'd Enjoy This...

I could hardly believe my eyes reading an email from The Athletic, as he was writing about four Big-10 teams making the Elite Eight, and he wrote... "The basketball conference of the year: We’ve mentioned a bunch of Big Ten teams in here, haven’t we? Since 1985, this is just the fourth time a conference has taken up half the Elite Eight. Guaranteed one Final Four spot, and could have three. Pleasingly, these are all traditional Big Ten members, too. So … is this the year the B1G breaks its quarter-century championship drought (2000 Michigan State)?" Pleasingly? How do YOU read that? The new West Coast teams are invaders? The Vikings from the West? That only pure members, those who founded the conference count? How much more can you diminish new conference members? Especially when we have brought so much WINNING to the Big-10? What say YOU?