Youngsters give Cougars hope

There is only one way a Pac-10 season can get any worse.

But thanks to a home win over UCLA two weekends ago, the Washington State Cougars avoided experiencing a winless conference baseball season.

Not that it’s much consolation to first-year coach Donnie Marbut.

“It was a tough year,” Marbut admitted Monday, reached while he was on a recruiting trip. “When we took this job last year, we knew it was going to be tough. But we had a route we wanted to take to build this program the right way.

“We weren’t going to go for a quick fix, winning one Pac-10 game or seven, it doesn’t matter. You want to build the program so that you can win 13, 14 Pac-10 games and get into the (NCAA) regionals. I think we did it right this year, but, yeah, it wasn’t easy.”

But there is hope for the Cougars.

Some of their freshman played well – and a lot – down the stretch.

Big (6-foot-4, 262-pounds) first baseman Jim Murphy led the way for the freshmen, hitting .287 with seven home runs and 28 RBIs in 50 games. Infielder Scott Suttmeier hit .290 in 30 games, Matthew Thomas showed an exceptional glove while Garret Kimbrel and Nick Hall both had big hits in the UCLA series.

And then there’s the example from a Northwest neighbor.

Oregon State, which just seven seasons ago was 7-17 and eighth in the Pac-10, won its first unified Pac-10 title since 1952 by two games over Arizona. The Beavers (41-9 overall), are ranked as high as second in the country but were seeded eighth in the NCAA tournament pairings announced Monday.

“Oregon State is a great model to follow,” Marbut said. “They have some advantages because they are the only in-state school, with Oregon not having a program, but they do a great job of keeping Oregon kids at home and keeping them out of the draft.”

OSU will host an NCAA regional this weekend, welcoming Virginia (41-18), St. John’s (39-16) and the Beavers’ first-round opponent, Ohio State (39-18), to Corvallis.

If Oregon State can advance from the regional, it will face the winner of the Long Beach State regional, which includes the 49ers (36-20), West Coast Conference champ Pepperdine (38-21) and USC (37-19), in a three-game super regional series.

The Pac-10 earned five berths in the NCAA tourney, including Arizona State (34-22) hosting a regional, Arizona (37-19) playing at defending champion Cal State Fullerton and Stanford (32-23) traveling to Baylor.

But there was one glaring omission.

California, which finished a game ahead of Stanford in the Pac-10 standings, had a better overall record (34-23), took two of three Pac-10 games from the Cardinal and finished the season by winning two games at Arizona, didn’t receive an at-large berth. The Bears also swept a two-game series at Long Beach State.

“It’s terrible,” Marbut said, noting Cal’s Pac-10 mark and the fact Auburn (32-24) was under .500 in the Southeast Conference (13-17) but earned an at-large berth. “It’s bad for our conference.”

Around the area

Community Colleges of Spokane finished one of its most successful seasons in years with a fourth-place finish in the NWAACC tournament at Lower Columbia College. The Sasquatch, who ended 32-14, won their first two games behind the complete-game pitching of second-team All-NWAACC selection Luke Farden and Travis Bertholf, named to the East Region’s second team. But in the winner’s bracket game with host, and favorite Lower Columbia, CCS fell behind 3-0 after three innings, could only manage six singles off freshman D.J. Lidyard and lost 3-1. Despite 11 hits Sunday, including three apiece from Kevin Young and Bryan Winston, CCS fell 9-6 to Mt. Hood. … Winston and outfielders Brent Mertens and Scott Santschi all earned first-team All-NWAACC recognition. Those three, along with Farden and catcher Shawn Gizynski, were named to the East Region first team, while Bertholf was joined on the second team by relief pitcher Joe Byers.

•Washington State Senior Kaeo Rubin, playing his last series as a Coug, had four hits in the three games against ASU… . Another senior, catcher Brady Everett, added three hits in the series to finish his lone WSU season at .337 with a team-high 15 home runs and 62 RBIs.