By Chois Woodman
After suffering an extra-inning loss to La Salle on Friday night, the Texas Tech baseball team was able to bounce back with wins on Saturday and Sunday to get the series win.
The Red Raiders wrapped up the series with a 7-0 win over the Explorers.
Tech head coach Tim Tadlock said he was disappointed his team did not sweep the weekend series, but was happy to see how they bounced back after Friday night.
“We want to win every day and obviously we wanted to win the series,” he said. “More than anything it was really disappointing on Friday. Hopefully our guys learned from it, and they played pretty good the last couple of days.”
The Red Raiders improved to 7-5 with the win and 6-1 at Dan Law Field.
One of the bright spots for Tech all weekend was pitching and defense. The first year head coach said he was pleased with the way his team played during the home stand.
“It’s all coming together,” Tadlock said. “I don’t think we’ll ever have all of the answers. At the same time, we’ve thrown two shutouts in a row. We’ve played pretty good defense. We really go get the ball in the outfield.”
On Saturday Trey Masek improved to 2-0 with a nine-inning complete game shutout. Masek has still not allowed a run in 24 innings pitched this weekend.
On Sunday afternoon, Tech freshman Jeff Withrow went 7 innings with 8 strikeouts, and he allowed no earned runs in outing.
Withrow said watching Masek pitch so well the previous night helped motivate him to try and do the same thing.
“It’s a really good push,” he said. “It’s like you look up to Trey and kind of want to be like him. You go out there and try to do your best, and it was a good day today.”
The Red Raiders tossed back-to-back shutouts for the first time in more than 10 years.
Tech will be back on the field on Tuesday in Tucson, Ariz. where they will take on the defending national champions, the Arizona Wildcats.
Tech outfielder Devon Conley said the team is excited to play against a team as talented as Arizona.
“I’m excited, really excited to get an opportunity against the defending national champions,” Conley said. “It will be fun to play with the competition and just see how we are against those kinds of players.”
About Morgan Crump
