In two very different ballgames, a nail-biter Friday night and a blowout Saturday, the UNLV Rebels beat Stanford in the first two games of a three-game set to clinch the upset series victory at Sunken Diamond.
Sparked by another masterful outing from senior starting pitcher Mark Appel Friday night, No. 16 Stanford overwhelmed No. 23 Texas for a three-game home sweep… Continue Reading »
Stanford’s bats started quiet once again, but a middle-inning run, capped with a decisive four-run seventh inning, gave the Cardinal a series-clinching 7-2 victory against Texas.
Five-game winning streaks don’t happen on their own in baseball, even against inferior opposition. So as the No. 16 Cardinal takes that momentum into a measuring-stick home series with No. 23 Texas this weekend, Stanford will look to remain potent at the plate against a Longhorn team making its first road trip of the season.
Stanford’s freshman pitchers impressed, but the bats never awoke as No. 7 Stanford fell in its season-opening series to No. 17 Rice, two games to one in Houston.
I have a confession to make. I’m not ready to accept that Stanford’s football season is over. I didn’t realize I had a problem until I sat down to write this column. Every idea that popped into my head was about football. Two weeks ago I wrote about the 2013 schedule. Last week I wrote about Manti Te’o. This week I hit a dead end.
Thud. That’s perhaps the only way to describe how the Stanford baseball team ended its season. The Cardinal got beat by a No. 3 Florida State team that flat-out deserved its national seed. But 17-1? 18-7? What a way to go, especially when a Mark Marquess-coached team hadn’t lost by 10 or more runs once—much less twice—since April 2009.
There are no easy weekends in Pac-12 baseball, but you would be hard-pressed to schedule a home stretch with more chances to make up ground than No. 12 Stanford’s final three weeks. With Stanford (29-14, 11-10 Pac-12) staring up at conference leader No. 10 Oregon (34-14, 16-8), the Cardinal’s upcoming series against the eighth-, 11th- and ninth-place teams in the Pac-12 are an opportunity that the squad can’t afford to let slip away. Stanford’s quest to improve its playoff positioning begins tonight at Sunken Diamond against a Washington State (23-20, 9-11) team that has lost its last two Pac-12 series.