Prince doing it all for WSU
PULLMAN – Jared Prince was making his first start in a Pac-10 baseball game, and he wanted to win it.
Even if it took two days.
Starting the first game of last week’s series against Arizona State, the Washington State freshman extraordinaire took the mound on Thursday night, only to have a spotless outing interrupted by a partial blackout, forcing the suspension of play in the top of the third inning.
While that was that for the Sun Devils’ starting pitcher, Prince would have none of it.
“He told us on Thursday night, ‘I can go tomorrow,’ ” head coach Don Marbut said. “He just has that aura about him that he can do anything. He’s so competitive and he works so hard at it.
“He pitched on pure guts on Friday.”
Pure guts, it turns out, was enough to beat the 14th-ranked team in the country. Prince pitched another 3 1/3 innings Friday afternoon after going 2 2/3 the night before, giving up just one run – the first he’d allowed all season – pushing WSU to a third conference win in its first four games.
Prince’s 0.36 ERA on the season has been impressive, to be sure.
The Cougars knew they were getting a potential star hurler in the 6-foot-3 righty from Poulsbo, Wash. What they didn’t expect – and Marbut is as blunt as can be on this fact – was a star hitter as well.
Prince’s pitching acumen has almost been outdone by his success at the plate, to the point where he’s a mainstay in the cleanup spot and is hitting .431, just one point behind a senior, Jay Miller, who’s on track to set the school record for hits in a season.
“They had to really remake me hitting,” Prince admitted. “I was not college-ready when I came in. I had the hands and all that, but as far as the body mechanics and all of that I was just an athlete hitting, not a hitter hitting. It took a lot, a lot of work.”
Marbut had to put in a similar amount of work to convince Prince to make his collegiate name at WSU in the first place.
After piloting the North Kitsap football team, Prince decided he didn’t like any of the collegiate possibilities ahead of him at quarterback. Focusing on baseball, Prince took his visit to Pullman last spring for a series against Washington – the other school the high school senior was considering.
When the Huskies waxed the Cougars in three straight games, it would have seemed obvious that the West Side native would have stayed there in college.
“I’ll tell you what got me,” Prince said. “I came home that Monday from my trip. I didn’t know what to do, because I really liked the coaching staff here but they just got trashed by the Huskies.
“And we had a game Tuesday against a horrible, horrible team that we beat 17-3. And Coach Marbut drove all the way from here to watch me play. That gave me the impression that they’re going to work.”
That notion clicked for Prince, now a 19-year-old.
Prince will start the second game of this weekend’s series at UCLA, which begins today. He’ll almost certainly hit cleanup for all three games as the Cougars try to improve on their 21-10 record, a win total that already matches last year’s.
Prince said he’s confident in his ability to pitch to Pac-10 hitters, just as he believes he’ll keep improving at the plate as he learns the intricacies of hitting.
That might be the best news of all for Cougars fans: Prince has no designs on focusing on just one part of the game for now.
Asked if he plans to continue pitching and playing right field while he’s at WSU, the freshman star had the simplest of answers.
“Oh, yeah,” he said.