Improving baseball takes on tourney

It seems like decades ago that the UCF Baseball team suffered arguably its worst series of the season against East Carolina back in mid-March. At least it seems that long ago to head coach Terry Rooney.

That weekend, the Knights (22-33) lost all three games to the Pirates (41-15) by a combined score of 49-7, but the Knights have improved since then. They open the Conference USA tournament Wednesday looking to upset the top-seeded Pirates in the tournament and prove they are a different team than the one that showed up in the March 20-22 series.

"They played very well against us, but I think that what is good to note is that it was early in March," Rooney said. "This is a much different ball club than when we played up in North Carolina [early in the season]. I don't know what the results are going to be, but we are a much different team, a much more prepared team and we are playing better, but obviously we have a tough task ahead of us."

The task of knocking off the No. 1-seeded Pirates doesn't look as impossible as it seemed just a couple of months ago. UCF finished the season on an impressive run, defeating a good Stetson team twice, shutting out Rice (a conference foe ranked No. 2 in the nation at the time) and taking two of three games from Houston in the final series of the regular season. The main reason for their success has been its pitching staff, which held Houston to a team batting average of .228 in three games.

"I think our success down the stretch here has to do with the leadership on the team and those guys doing good things," Rooney said. "Obviously we have played much better and there are a couple of reasons for it. We have had timely hitting and great starting pitching."

ECU comes into the tournament claiming the C-USA regular season crown. The Pirates have an offense that boasts a .344 team batting average and has belted 94 home runs on the year. The pitching staff is respectable, striking out 459 batters in 493.0 innings and held a 4.14 team ERA.

"I think to win a tournament at some point you are going to have to beat a lot of good teams," Rooney said. "We are playing a very good East Carolina team and they are a top 20 team in the country."

The Knights come into the tournament with some pretty big bulk themselves. UCF has equaled an all-time mark in homers with 66, tying the 1998 squad, and will look to provide some of that power against ECU. Their power has come through on the road as well, with the Knights recording 21 home runs in 22 games away from Jay Bergman Field.

Leading that hitting attack is Shane Brown, who has a team-high .345 batting average. But it's been another player that has stepped up that has surprised the team: Beau Taylor.

The freshman catcher has shot to the top of the UCF lineup, compiling a .338 batting average along with four homers and 23 RBIs in 40 games. He's also getting it done defensively, having thrown out a C-USA best 23 runners this season.

As for the UCF pitching staff, Caleb Graham has continued to impress down the stretch. He has improved his record to 4-2 and is second best on the team with a 5.83 ERA. His play along with the rest of the staff will be crucial if the Knights plan on getting far in the tournament.

"We have played very well in the second half [of the season]," Rooney said. "I think our pitching needs to continue to improve and get better."

In a season of firsts for the program that includes the most wins (nine) in C-USA since joining the conference and a team-record for home runs, Rooney sees the progress that his team is making.

He has visions of leading this program to conference titles, regional crowns and eventually, Omaha, Neb., which annually holds the College World Series.

He sees how close this team is to those goals and the next step to getting there starts with upsetting ECU in the first round of the tournament.

"People can see that as we continue to improve, those things can become a reality," he said.  "It's not easy in college baseball, I mean we just went to Rice, the No. 2 team in the country, and shut them out [May 8]. You can't do that in a lot of sports, and we can do that with this baseball team and that's how this program is continuing to develop."