Thursday update: OSU softball starts Friday Comments
The Oregon State softball team opens coach Kirk Walker’s 16th season here on Friday at ASU’s Kajikawa Classic tournament. We had a story on pitcher Kelly Dyer and the staff earlier this week; here’s our preview story that will appear online tonight and in Friday’s print edition.
The Oregon State softball team opens its season this morning at the Kajikawa Classic in Tempe, intent on returning to the NCAA Tournament after a two-year hiatus.
The Beavers play five games at the tournament, starting with today’s 8:30 a.m. debut against Mississippi. They then face Nevada at 1:30 p.m., and then play Creighton, Notre Dame and Southern Utah on Saturday and Sunday before returning home.
OSU hasn’t won an opener since 2005 but the team made a fast start in nonconference action a point of emphasis in offseason and preseason practices. Teams must have a .500 or better overall record to make the NCAA tournament and a subpar nonconference performance undermined OSU’s tournament hopes in 2008 and 2009.
Pitching could be a strongpoint for Walker’s 16th OSU club, as a veteran staff returns, strengthened by the addition of new pitching coach Dana Sorensen, a three-time All-American at Stanford. Senior Kelly Dyer (11-18, 3.66) and sophomore Page Hall (14-12, 3.26) have extensive Pacific-10 Conference experience and redshirt sophomore Karmen Holladay (0-0, 9.00), a Corvallis High graduate, is healthy again and expected to contribute as well.
“Kelly definitely looks much more confident and prepared for her senior season,” now that she’s completely recovered from a 2008 shoulder surgery, Walker said.
“Page probably did more than any freshman pitcher we’ve ever had in our program. She threw in more games (40) than Brianne McGowan, Crystal Draper or Monica Hoffman ever did as freshmen. She gained (experience) in big games and has come in with a with a different focus, intensity and desire.
“Our pitchers are eager and hungry of to get back out on the field and see what they are capable of.”
Added Dyer: “Any three of us” can pitch if need be. “We haven’t played in any games yet, but facing our batters in practice I feel really good.”
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Oregon State senior golfer Diego Velasquez is one of 25 players on the watch list for the 2010 Hogan Award, that sport’s highest intercollegiate honor.
The Hogan Award semifinalists will be announced April 14. The three finalists named on May 11 will be invited to Colonial Country Club in Fourth Worth, Texas, for the Hogan Award presentation on the evening of May 24.
Velasquez had an off-weekend at the Feb. 3-5 Hawaii-Hilo Invitational, and finished in a tie for 29th place. OSU next competes at the Battle of the Beach at Pelican Hills in Newport Beach, Calif., this Sunday through Tuesday.
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The Beavers’ baseball team opens at Hawaii on Feb. 19. According to this snippet from Ferd Lewis (yes, his first name is Ferd) of the Honolulu Advertister, interest in Hawaii baseball seems to be slightly on the rise. To wit:
“With a week to go before its Feb. 19 regular-season opener against Oregon State, UH baseball has sold 17 more season tickets than last year. The total, as of early (Feb. 10) was said ot be 635, the most in eearly a decade.”
That’s part of a larger story on UH athletic finances.
Speaking of OSU baseball, here’s a preview of the Maine Black Bears, from the campus newspaper, the Maine Campus. Maine visits Corvallis for four games on March 19-21. It’s one of the more interesting nonconference series, and includes an old-fashioned doubleheader on March 20.
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Here’s an update on former OSU women’s soccer player Macy Jo Harrison, who left in 2008 after her freshman year, from the Napa valley (Calif.) Register newspaper:
After redshirting last fall, Macy Jo Harrison will begin playing in a spring season next week as a midfielder for the UNLV women’s soccer team.
Harrison was a three-time Napa County Player of the Year for Napa High who played a year of soccer at Oregon State, making seven starts while appearing in 18 games for the Beavers. She was All-Monticello Empire League each of her four years for Napa and as a senior had 22 goals and 18 assists.
At the club level, she played for Marin FC 90’s, which won a national championship during her time on the squad. Harrison also played on the Cal North State ODP team for four years, the regional team for two years, and was on the 2006 under-16 national team.
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Finally, The Blog thinks Pac-10 expansion would be a tremendous mistake. The league works perfectly just as it is.
Nobody cares what we think, but you might care what longtime Pac-10 reporter Jon Wilner of the San Jose Mercury News thinks. So, here’s his well-reasoned analysis, which essentially comes to the same conclusion.
Hey, if the Pac-10 can get Colorado and say, Notre Dame, the one independent school that fits the conference’s athletic/academic profile and would generate some added TV ratings, go for it.
Otherwise, the presidents and chancellors should tell new commish Larry Scott to bark up a different tree. Why hack off your fans by adding Boise State, for example, which adds nothing of value to the Pac-10?
And to those who see BYU and Utah, or Colorado State and Colorado, being admitted as a pair: No way will the Pac-10 do something as out of character and expand and add only one major TV market. It doesn’t pencil out.
Yes, all of the Pac-10’s current rivals share a common TV market. But they were all playing each other in some form of league long before TV was invented, or, in the case of the Arizona schools, admitted before TV became THE major player in college athletics.
The new members will be from DIFFERENT major TV markets that do not currently have a Pac-10 presence (sorry SDSU and Fresno; besides being CSU schools, somethig the UC schools, Stanford and USC would never admit, the Pac-10 already owns your market).
It’s the only way enough TV sets could be added to jack up the rights fees enough to increase the revenue enough so the current members wouldn’t see a decline when the money pie is divided 12 ways instead of 10.
Of course, the Pac-10 could also take a page out of the MLB/NFL handdbook and invite (for example) Utah and somebody, and then charge them a $100 million franchise fee.
But that ain’t gonna happen. Neither (I hope) will expansion, once the presidents and chancellors return to their senses.
Notre Dame and Utah; Notre Dame and Colorado, or even Colorado and Utah. Either that, or nobody.
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