Huskies thump Cougs
PULLMAN – This was not the start to the Pac-10 season that Donnie Marbut envisioned for his Washington State baseball team.
One day after playing in front of the eighth-largest crowd in Bailey-Brayton Field history, Marbut’s Cougars sent a crowd of 1,576 home with nothing but disappointment after they lost 15-4 to archrival Washington on Saturday.
“As poorly as you can possibly play offensively, defensively, pitching-wise, passion, you name it,” Marbut said. “We just played as poor as you can play. It’s just really simple.”
The Cougars, having lost in 11 innings on Friday, fell to 13-9 and 0-2 in league play without any need for extra frames this time. The Huskies (13-9, 2-0) scored three runs off of WSU starter Nick Ison (3-3) in the first inning and then feasted on the Cougars bullpen in the middle innings, also taking advantage of a number of the home team’s mishaps.
Washington scored seven runs in the fifth, sixth and seventh innings, all with two outs. And the visitors added five more runs in the eighth to cap off the scoring. To make things worse, WSU made life difficult for itself by giving up seven unearned runs in the process.
“It’s never easy, but you’ve still got to trust out there that your defense is going to play for you,” said reliever Jayson Miller, who gave up six runs in 1 2/3 innings – five of them unearned. “That stuff happens and you’ve just got to work out of it. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to do that.”
The Cougars’ best scoring chance came much earlier. In the first inning WSU scored a run and then loaded the bases before recording its first out of the game, giving itself an ideal opportunity to erase the early deficit.
But No. 5 hitter Jim Murphy swung at the first pitch after consecutive walks before him, popping up to third base. Jeff Miller struck out looking. And finally, Greg Lagried popped out to second base, and just like that, the Cougars were headed back into the field.
“I guess I’m just surprised. I thought we were past this,” Marbut said. “We had him on the ropes in the first inning, but got absolutely zero production from the middle of our order and that just changes the whole ballgame.
“Though we got nine hits, our offense has just been horrible for two days.”
If the Cougars are to do better, they’ll have to capitalize on more of their own hits – and, of course, make sure that the Huskies don’t pick up another 22 in the process.
One bright spot for WSU came from the bat of cleanup hitter Jared Prince, the Cougars star who has been mired in a season-long slump. He hit his first home run of the season and drove in three of his team’s four runs.
“I was pressing a little bit and I kind of got out of my (own) way and it’s opening up a little bit,” Prince said. “We’ve got some soul-searching to do, but I think we’ll do it.”