Katerri O’Neal
Blue & White Flash / Staff Writer
It is about that time to bring the games back outdoors. Last year, the Jackson State University baseball team had 16 freshmen and they won more than half of their games. Even with this winning percentage there were no winning streaks last seaon.
They had 2 seniors on the team last year and this year they enter the season with 4 seniors.
Head Coach Omar Johnson said, “It was a learning experience for the guys for the most part because there were young ones on the team. We were forced to be in a situation where we had to play some guys right away, so that was the year experience and we expect them to do better this year.”
He explained that the thing they did last year was pitch well and play defense and that they did a really good job of that.
“If you look at our scores from last year, we were always close in every game. I think we played about 4 or 5 extended games,” said Johnson.
At some point during last season JSU played all freshmen in field and that dose not ever really happen at this level. Johnson said their defense and pitching actually kept them in a lot of games and now the things we need to work on is being a better base-running team because they did not do as a good job of that as they have done in the past.
“We have to play our short game to be able to make the base-run, It’ll take some of the pressure off the guys for having to actually get a base-hit to score or got to get 10 or 11 hits to win the game,” Johnson said. “We’re a year older for the most part, we got some real experienced guys, our pitching and defense is definately going to be our strengths again this year, we added a couple of new guys and they should help out this year offensively. Playing hard and exicuting short games, pitching and playing defense again should put us in a good position.”
Gabriel Babineaux, a junior mass communications major and center fielder from Houston, Texas said, “Last year our team was very young talented and inconsistent. Our team is known for its pitching, speed and defense.”
He added that it is no secret that they had to hit and if they hit like they are capable of it will be tough for teams to beat them.
“This year our team is full of experience and everybody is hungry for a championship,” said Babineaux.
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