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This Week in the Pac-10, Apr. 8: Kurt Heyer and the Wildcats host Top-25 Cal

by on Apr. 07, 2011, under Sports
Oregon Ducks Pac-10 baseball

The Ducks are swinging for their first Pac-10 win vs. U-Dub.
Photo by Crystal Ochoa/The Arizona Republic

The Arizona Wildcats baseball team wasn’t expecting to be sitting in 6th place at this point, but that’s life when you play in a conference with six ranked teams.

The best remedy is to beat one of them and the Cats have another chance at home.

Elsewhere in the Pac-10, none of the tri-leaders play each other this weekend but one of the teams tied for 4th looks to make a move.

It’s another fun-filled three days with a full slate of five Pac-10 series. The matchups look like this (with each team’s average ranking in the five polls):

#16.6 Cal (19-7 / 5-1) at #21.2 ARIZONA (20-10 / 2-4)
The Bears are playing very well, winning 13 of their last 16, but this will be their first true road series of the year.

#5.6 ASU (22-6 / 5-1) at #20.6 OSU (21-7 / 2-1)
The Devils leave town for their first conference road games. If someone else is going to win this league they need to be rooting for the Beavers.

#15.8 Stanford (14-7 / 2-1) at USC (11-18 / 2-4)
Stanford is starting Pac-10 play with two straight road series. If they get through this weekend they could get into the championship discussion in a hurry.

#20.8 UCLA (14-10 / 5-1) at WSU (12-12 / 1-5)
The Bruins gave up six total runs in their sweep last week. If Wazzu gets to three at any point they should stop the game and celebrate.

Washington (7-19 / 0-3) at Oregon (14-12 / 0-3)
Somebody’s going to get their first Pac-10 win! Don’t be surprised if the Ducks take all three. UW looks like this year’s ASU Basketball.

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So the year-away Wildcats aren’t going to shock the conference and win Andy Lopez’s first Pac-10 title. It’s time to focus on the smaller goal of winning a home series against a good team.

Cal is second in the Pac-10 in team ERA and in this conference that’s saying something. All three of the Bears’ starters – Erik Johnson, Justin Jones and Dixon Anderson – have at least three wins with a sub-3 ERA.

The Cats counter with the best hitting team in the league. Joey Rickard continues to lead the Pac-10 in batting average while Cole Frenzel and Bryce Ortega are 3rd and 4th.

Lots of baseball left to be played. This weekend’s games start at 6 p.m. tonight and tomorrow, and 12 noon on Sunday.

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Scott Terrell thinks it’s too soon to go to the bullpen. Wind up on Twitter and Facebook.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 7th, 2011 at 11:40 PM and is filed under Sports. Tags for this post: , , , , , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  • Milan Moravec

    University of California Berkeley Chancellor Robert J Birgeneau and Provost Breslauer need to go.(The author who has 35 years’ consulting experience, has taught at University of California Berkeley, where he was able to observe the culture and the way senior management work.) Recently: Chancellor pays ex Michigan governor $300,000 for lectures; NCAA places men’s basketball program on probationChancellor Robert J Birgeneau’s ($500,000 salary) eight-year fiscal track record is dismal indeed. He would like to blame the politicians, since they stopped giving him every dollar asked for, and the state legislators do share some responsibility for the financial crisis. But not in the sense he means.A competent chancellor would have been on top of identifying inefficiencies and then crafting a plan to fix them. Able oversight by the UC Board of Regents and the legislature would have required him to provide data on inefficiencies and on what steps he was taking to solve them during his 8 year reign. Instead, every year Birgeneau would request a budget increase, the regents would agree to it, and the legislature would provide. The hard questions were avoided by all concerned, and the problems just piled up to $150 million of inefficiencies….until there was no money left.It’s not that Birgeneau was unaware that there were, in fact, waste and inefficiencies. Faculty and staff raised issues with Birgeneau and Provost Breslauer ($400,000 salary), but when they failed to see relevant action taken, they stopped. Finally, Birgeneau engaged some expensive ($3,000,000) consultants to tell him and Provost Breslauer what they should have known as leaders or been able to find out from the bright, engaged Cal. people. (A prominent east coast university is accomplishing the same without consultants)But you never want a crisis to go to waste. Merely cutting out inefficiencies does not have the effect desired. Cal has been badly damaged. Good people are loosing their jobs. Cal’s leadership is either incompetent or culpable.Increasing the budget is not enough. Take aim at the real source of Cal’s crisis by honorably retiring Chancellor Birgeneau and Provost Breslauer.We heartily agree.

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