In short....travel.

Oregon played great in California beating San Diego in two mid-week games, and then a tight series with Santa Barbara. Between being on the road for nearly a week, and the emotional intensity of the games--they were spent when they returned home.

In the loss to Portland, (3-0) our pitching was good, but the hitting was off.

Then, due to weather...the Michigan series got moved up to Thursday, and the team arrived in Ann Arbor at 2:00 AM on Thursday...and played terrible later in the day. Flat effort pitching, and flat effort hitting in the 10-0 loss. Oregon was better on Friday, but still not up to their usual in their win. On Saturday--the Ducks stranded 13 base runners and could not get the timely hits, nor the pitches in the 4-3 loss.

Too much traveling over ten days, and loaded with intense, energy-draining games as well. Coach Waz learned from this and I am sure he will not schedule future mid-week games on away trips...especially when we have two travel weekends in a row.

I am concerned about the game at Portland later today at 5:00 PM, and am hoping that being back in their own beds for a few days will return the sharpness needed. After Portland beat us last week...they traveled to Seattle Pacific and lost the series. ☹️

Oregon dropped in the rankings with D1Baseball, (rightly so) to No. 20 and we play No. 19 Nebraska this week at PK Park.

Time to turn it around!

Life in a coast to coast league is down right hard on any sport, but especially on the diamonds where three game series are common.

It almost seems like an average three away game pattern in the B1G for us is, loss, win and push, with the better team normally on that last game winning side.

No easy answer. Scheduling might try grouping two regional series together (Maryland/Rutgers; Michigan/Ohio State) which mostly solves time zone issues, but puts teams in motels for a week. Charter flights that can better cater to the needs of sports teams might help, but NCAA regs may limit that.

Learning how to better deal with it over time is likely the only answer.

19 minutes ago, Washington Waddler said:

Learning how to better deal with it over time is likely the only answer.

Agreed. We should not have lost the series last year at Ohio State, and now at Michigan. We cannot change the B1G schedule, and we will have back-to-back road series, but Waz has learned to not add mid-week games which add to the energy drain. (I hope)