Well after four amazing and wonderful years of playing baseball for WKU, it is officially over and it’s  hard to believe!  While my senior year didn’t end quite the way that I had imagined it, I think I can say for myself and my other teammates that this past year was one we will never forget.  Heading into our conference tournament, we still had an outside shot at making an NCAA Regional.  We either had to win a couple games and hope for an at-large bid or win the tournament and get the automatic bid.  However, we ran into 2 very hot teams and made too many mistakes which, ultimately, cost us in both games.  The opening round game against #1 seed FAU was very crazy from start to finish! We got down 3-0 in the top of the 1^st inning but ultimately battled back to tie it at 6-6 on a pinch hit homerun by Monte Ketchum in the top of the 9^th.  In extra innings, we managed to pitch our way out of 2 bases loaded, no-out jams to keep the game going!  In the top of the 13^th, we finally ended up scoring 2 runs to take a 8-6 lead, but unfortunately we lost in the bottom of the inning on a walk off 3 run homerun.  This loss was extremely hard to stomach and really put us in a hole for the rest of the tournament.  We had to bounce back the very next morning at 9 AM vs Florida International.  We had a 3-2 lead heading into the 7^th inning but could not manage to hold on, eventually losing 7-3 and ending our season.  We finished the season with a 35-23 record and an RPI around 40, but did not do well enough in conference play to warrant an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament.

Even though we went 2 and out in the conference tournament, we managed to take home multiple awards at the opening ceremonies:

ALL SUN BELT CONFERENCE FIRST TEAM:

Matt Rice, Kes Carter, Rye Davis, Matt Ridings (Pitcher of Year)

ALL SUN BELT CONFERENCE SECOND TEAM:

Matt Payton

ACADEMIC ALL- AMERICA:

Matt Payton, Matt Rice, Matt Ridings

Despite our season ending earlier than we had hoped, we still had a great year and should be very proud of ourselves.  Obviously, we wish we were still playing but, we tried our hardest and came up just a little short.  Over the last couple months, I had thoughts of how hard it would be to play my last game as a Hilltopper, but it was a million times harder than I had ever imagined.  It is very emotional to know that you have played your last game with the group of guys that you have been around every single day for the last couple of years.  It is still hard to imagine that I will not be walking back out on The Nick in the fall for another season.  The last 4 years have been the most unbelievable 4 years of my entire life and I am so thankful that I got to be a part of the WKU Baseball family.  I just want to end by saying thank you to all of my teammates over the last four years and to everyone that has supported WKU Baseball.  I also want to thank my family for all the support that they have shown for me over the years. God Bless!! 

Monte Ketchum’s game tying homerun vs FAU in SBC Tournament

After a tough weekend down at Louisiana Lafayette, we were all real excited to be back at home at The Nick for our final home series of the year.  It was also the last home series ever for the 6 seniors.  It hasn’t really set in yet that we won’t play any more games at The Nick but I can say on behalf of the rest of the seniors that it was great to go out on a series win vs MTSU!  We had a short turnaround this week with our first game on Thursday night instead of Friday.  We once again got off to a great start to the weekend with a 5-1 win over the Blue Raiders.  Unfortunately, we did not carry that momentum into Friday’s game as we came up short in a 7-2 loss.  Even though we lost Friday, we still had a chance to win the series on Saturday, which is our goal for every weekend.  We came out swinging Saturday as we run ruled the Blue Raiders 15-5 and improved our record to 35-21 (16-14 in the Sun Belt).  We really needed this win to gain some momentum heading into the conference tournament this upcoming week.

Saturday was also a very special day for the 8 seniors in our program: Matt Payton, Bart Carter, Shane Cameron, Garrie Krueger, Jake Wells, Adam Reynolds, David Jones, and myself.  Senior Day is always a very special day and this year was no different.  Before the game we had a very nice ceremony honoring the group of seniors and our families.  Because last week was graduation and we were at Lafayette, they also had a special graduation ceremony on the field for the three of us that graduated this spring: Matt Payton, Adam Reynolds, and myself.  It is kind of hard to believe that this group of guys will never play another game at The Nick, but I think I can say for everyone that these past four years of playing at home have been nothing short of amazing.  It also helps that our last game at home was a 10 run win against MTSU.

Well, we finished our regular season with a record of 35-21, 16-14 in the very tough Sun Belt Conference.  I think that in my 4 years here at WKU, this is the most balanced our conference has been.  We currently have a high RPI and are still in contention for an at-large bid to a regional, but we really need to have a good showing in the conference tournament.  We finished 8^th in the conference and our first game is this Wednesday at 12:30 vs Florida Atlantic.  We also have Florida International and South Alabama on our side of the bracket.  As I’m typing this we are on our way down to MTSU for the tournament.  We have practice at 8 AM tomorrow morning (the lowest seed practices the earliest) and a banquet tomorrow night including a Home Run Derby.  Last year Chad Cregar was the winner in the Home Run Derby and this year we are hoping that Chris Bullard can make it two years in a row for the Tops!!  It’s hard to believe the season is almost over but we still feel that we have a lot of ball left and that we can get hot and make a run in the postseason.  Until next week, God Bless!!!

After missing last week, I’m finally back!  The past two weeks have been so hectic that I couldn’t even find time to do my weekly blog so I apologize to anyone who got online looking for one this past week!  After our weekend series against Arkansas Little Rock (UALR) two weekends ago, we had basically two days to take all of our exams before we left Wednesday to head to Lafayette, Louisiana.  The weekend against UALR started off great as we scored 3 runs in the bottom of the 9^th to come from behind and win 5-4.  Saturday was another very eventful day for the WKU Baseball program as we celebrated 100 years of WKU sports with the dedication of the Paul Orberson Clubhouse.  We were all fortunate enough to get to meet Mr. Orberson as well as the many other people who made our Clubhouse possible.  We cannot thank them enough for their donations and everything that they have done to help our program!!  Unfortunately, we came up short and lost on Saturday but the pregame celebrations made it a day none of us will forget!  Heading into the weekend we had won 17 straight home weekend series and we had a great chance heading into Sunday to make it 18 straight.  However, we came up short again, losing 4-2, dropping the series.  We were now 13-11 in the conference with only two weekend series left.  We knew this series loss had hurt our chances of getting an at-large bid, but with a road trip to Louisiana Lafayette coming up, we had to regroup fast and get ready to face the hottest team in our league. 

Well after two tough days of exams for everybody, we were all finally done with classes and ready to head down to Cajun Land!  I think I can speak for everyone on the team when I say that we absolutely love going to Lafayette to play!  I don’t know how it has worked out this way but this is our 4^th straight year going down there and it is also the site of our Conference Tournament Championship from 2 years ago, so a few guys on the team have some great memories from there.  The atmosphere is also very different from any other team in our conference, and the fan support there is great!  Since classes and finals were over, we headed out Wednesday night, driving to Tuscaloosa, AL and stopping there for the night before arriving in Lafayette Thursday afternoon.  Even though it was a long bus ride both there and back, we passed the time by with some catchphrase, some card games, and our new favorite game, changing names in people’s phones in hope of confusing them!!  Not everyone had as much fun with that last game however!!  

Our weekend once again got off to a great start with a hard fought 2-1 win on Friday night, which ended Lafayette’s 12 game conference winning streak.  I was also lucky enough Friday night to get to be on the same field as a movie star almost every baseball player has heard of!  Roger Dorn, from the Major League series, made a guest appearance over at First Base for the Hilltoppers!  Luckily Saturday and Sunday we got our normal first baseman back, Jake “GiGi” Wells.  Unfortunately for the third weekend in a row, we failed to win the series, losing Saturday 12-5, and Sunday 4-3 in 10 innings.  Lately we have been playing good enough to win more games, just have not been getting the breaks we need!  We just have to keep working hard and continue to fight until the last game of the year and we will be alright!

Just like every other road weekend, we once again had tremendous fan support.  And thanks to a well executed surprise, we had two more fans this past weekend than we normally have!  My girlfriend and her mom drove the 11 hours to Lafayette without me knowing and surprised me before the game Friday!  I had absolutely no idea they were coming but I’m glad they did and it was a great surprise!!  Lastly, I wanted to say Happy 29^th anniversary to my parents and an early Happy Birthday to my dad!!  Coming up this weekend is our last home series of the year as we host MTSU.  They have been playing really well lately and it should be another great series!  Saturday’s game is also Senior Day as Bart Carter, Garrie Krueger, Jake Wells, Shane Cameron, Matt Payton, Adam Reynolds, David “Cajun” Jones and myself will be recognized before the game!  Until next week, God Bless!! 

Bart, Shane, Payton, Garrie, Jake, and me.. The Seniors!

After we had a tremendous Sunday of baseball in which we beat FIU twice and improved our overall record to 30-14, we got a few much needed days off.  This was the first time this entire season that we did not have any midweek games and the rest was exactly what everyone needed.  With the exception of weights on Monday, we usually have the rest of the day off before we either play or practice on Tuesday.  Well, this week we had Monday completely off and had weights on Tuesday.  These two days gave us all a chance to rest and get away from the game a little bit before we picked it back up Wednesday with a tough practice.  With no practice until Wednesday, the week seemed to go by pretty slow, especially since many of us spent our off days catching up with missed classes and projects (or catching up on their Call of Duty skills!)  Thursday morning rolled around and we were on the road again, this time heading south to Troy.  We knew this was going to be another very tough series playing on the road and we knew we had to play our A game if we wanted to come away with a series win.

The weekend could not have gotten off to a better start on Thursday when we had a local southern style restaurant cater our meal after our practice.  Ask anybody and they will tell you it was one of the better meals we have had in a while!  The good weekend carried over into Friday as we won the opening game of the series 7-4 after an hour rain delay before the game.  And if any of you are wondering, we did not do any skits with the other team before the game!  We thought about it but instead we sat in our dugout and played games with each other such as the travel game, Johnny Swoop, Black Magic, and the hat game.  These games are very understood among baseball players across the country so if you are not sure how to play, just ask one of us and maybe we will fill you in on the fun!!  The win Friday moved us to 12-7 in the conference, with two games left on the weekend to win the series.  Unfortunately, we could not build on this momentum and got outplayed our next two games, resulting in a 5-4 loss in 10 innings and a 6-3 loss on Sunday.  This was not the way that we had anticipated the weekend ending and once again we missed a great opportunity to build some momentum heading into our second to last home series next weekend vs Arkansas Little Rock. 

It is always tough losing 2 out of 3 on a weekend series, especially after winning the opening game Friday.  We all know that we could have played much better on the weekend but there is nothing we can do about it now but keep our heads up and start getting ready for next weekend.  It should also be mentioned that the bus rides home after a long weekend usually aren’t that much fun.  We are currently in Alabama driving through all the rain, wondering if the Interstates around Nashville will be open by the time we make it there.  It has kind of been a crazy weekend with all the flooding going on around Nashville and my hometown of Franklin.  The local river has risen 26 feet in the last two days and much of the town has flooded, just like many other surrounding cities around Nashville.  We are all just hoping we make it home at a reasonable hour and that more importantly, everyone is safe!  I also feel the need to mention the Zaxby’s sauce incident that took place earlier in today’s trip when Jake Wells accidentally stepped on a Zaxby’s box sending Zaxby’s sauce flying up a few seats to the dislike of Matt Rice.  After a couple of death stares and cleaning of the above compartments, everything is back to normal!  Oh the things that happen on a 7 hour bus ride home!!

Well, we have another off week before we host Arkansas Little Rock this weekend.  It is our last week of classes on the year and the seniors last week of classes ever!  We are hoping for a couple good days of practice to get us ready for another big series this weekend.  Lastly, I’d like to ask for some prayers for the people of Nashville as the flooding has gotten worse over the last day or so.  Thank you and God Bless!!

A road heading into my hometown of Franklin, TN.

There is a great chance that this past week will go down as one of if not the most memorable week in the history of WKU Baseball.  As I mentioned in the last post, we had an extremely tough weekend down at Florida Atlantic and we knew this week had major implications on the rest of our season.  What we didn’t know however, was the amount of fame and publicity that was going to come from our rain delay skits that we took part in down at FAU.  The video, which can be seen again by searching WKU-FAU Rain Delay Theater on Youtube, was somehow turned into the people at ESPN and became an instant hit.  We were featured on shows such as SportsCenter, ESPN First Take, Pardon The Interruption, and ESPN SportsNation.  Our second baseman Matt Payton gained the most fame from it all as he was asked to do a live interview with commentator Jesse Palmer on the hit morning show, ESPN First Take.  I think it is safe to say that this was the first time that we can remember that WKU Baseball has been mentioned on ESPN.  If you ask us however, what happened Tuesday night was more deserving to be on ESPN than the rain delay video! 

There is nothing we needed more after a tough weekend than to see our in state rivals the Kentucky Wildcats coming into our park.  We knew this would be a tough game but would also be a great chance to prove that we are still a good team and can play with anyone.  Tuesday night also might have been the biggest game in the history of WKU Baseball to many people.  We had the privilege of playing UK at the stadium in downtown Bowling Green, home of the minor league Bowling Green Hot Rods.  This stadium has a little over 5,000 seats and we were hoping that with this game against UK we could sell out the stadium and break an all time attendance record for a WKU Baseball game.  Well, not only did we break the previous WKU record by over 3,000 people, but we also set the record for a college game in the whole state of Kentucky, with 6,183 people.  The previous record for a home game was just over 3,000 set 2 years ago against UK.  We have had this game circled on our calendars since the beginning of the season, knowing that a win against UK in front of all these people would do wonders for our baseball program.  However, not one person could have scripted the game any better than how it played out.  After getting a 2-0 lead in the first, we started the second inning with the first 16 hitters reaching base and eventually scoring.  Yep! That is right, 16 straight hitters reached base and scored.  I have never seen anything like that inning in my life and as someone heard on the radio after the game, that is the first time in a college baseball game since 1931, that 16 straight hitters have scored!  Of those 16 hitters we had 7 singles, 3 doubles, 3 home runs, 2 walks, and a hit by pitch.  After 2 innings, we were leading 18-0.  We ended winning the game 24-8 and on behalf of the whole team, I want to thank everyone who made it out to that record setting game and cheered us on!

The unfortunate thing about the game Tuesday was that we did not save enough runs for Wednesday’s game against Louisville.  We fought hard but came up short in a 7-4 loss.  We were upset about the loss to Louisville because it would have been a huge win for us but we had to shift our focus now to our weekend series vs FIU, who came into the weekend leading our conference in hitting.  Friday was another tough game as we lost in extra innings, 7-6.  This loss Friday was our 5^th straight conference loss.  With major storms coming in, we knew there was a small chance we would play on Saturday.  Many people would agree that Saturday was one of the longest days ever as we got there at 11 am and waited until 8 pm when we then took the tarp off in hopes of playing two games on Sunday.  You would be amazed at the stuff 25 college baseball players come up with when you’re stuck in a locker room together for 9 straight hours.  I’ll leave it at that!  The storms passed and luckily we got both games in on Sunday.  The theme lately has been to wait until the last inning to try and win it, and thankfully, in the first game that worked!  We had a pinch hit walk off grand slam in the bottom of the 9^th by Monte Ketchum to win 8-4.  We had a quick turnaround for game 2 and got some clutch 2 out hitting from Jake Wells and Logan Robbins in the 7^th inning on the way to an 8-3 win.  This moved our record to 30-14 and 11-7 in conference play.  We have no more midweek games this season and only 12 more regular season games left.  We head to Troy this weekend in what should be another tough series.  Lastly, I want to give a quick shout out to Big Schuyler and Little Schuyler for coming up and seeing me pitch this weekend!  Until next weekend, God Bless!!

Record Crowd of 6,183 against UK!