Proposed parish pipeline provides promise
May 3, 2011
Rebecca Cheramie
May 5, 2011
It’s the stretch run of the Southland Conference schedule and the Nicholls State baseball team is in overdrive to try and reach postseason play.
Make it Bachman-Turner Overdrive, as the Colonels are relying on that band’s famous mid-1970s musical catchphrase to try and advance to the conference tournament for the second-straight season.
“We definitely need to take care of business,” Nicholls State baseball coach Seth Thibodeaux said. “That’s the phrase you’ve been hearing around this field quite a bit lately. … We know what’s in front of us. We know what we have to do. With the teams that we play the next few weeks, if we take care of our business, we’ll get where we want to go.”
Taking care of business is something Nicholls didn’t do in the early stages of conference play. The Colonels lost their first six Southland Conference games and were sitting at 1-8 in the standings after the first three weekends of league play.
Thibodeaux said that slow start is because he put too much pressure on his team.
Players say it was a rare mixture of poor execution and bad baseball misfortune.
Either way, it thrust Nicholls onto its heels and put the team in a proverbial must-win situation early in the season.
“Surprised? Yeah, I guess you can say that,” pitcher Brad Delatte said. “You never really like to be surprised as a baseball player. You always like to focus on playing well more than the opponent, but we didn’t expect to start the way we did.”
But neither players nor coaches say they ever had doubt that the team would right the ship and turn around the season.
“The slow start really didn’t take us back,” senior outfielder Bear Comer said. “Like we said before, it humbled us real quick and we found out what other teams were made of and we found out the kind of team we were at that time and Coach always told us that every team in conference is as good as we are, but if we come out and play hard, we’d end up being in good shape.”
Thibodeaux’s sentiments ended up proving to be true as Nicholls has recovered from their slow start and has won nine of their past 14 games to thrust themselves back into the middle of the pack in the conference.
The Colonels say one of the reasons for that is simple, a greater emphasis on improvement in practice.
Baseball practices are usually the most laid back of any sport. But that hasn’t been the case in Thibodaux, as Nicholls has deposited several ounces of sweat in practice with righting their season in mind.
“Coach thought we’d been playing slow and the truth is we have been playing a little slow,” Comer said. “So we come out here and we pretty much ran through the whole practice. It’s not punishment, but we ran and practiced hard. Coach kept the pace up and we kept the pace up and there wasn’t a moment where we’re walking around or anything. We are hustling the whole time.”
Delatte agreed and said he credits the team’s increased workload as one of the factors involved in righting the team’s season.
“It’s all about speeding the game up,” Delatte said. “It’s like a constant gut-check. It always makes sure that you’re playing fast enough. It just gets you ready for the game.”
With the team’s recent turnaround, Nicholls is in the middle of the pack in the conference and is vying for a spot in the Southland Conference Tournament.
In total, eight of the league’s 12 teams advance to that event and Nicholls currently sits among a pack of teams fighting for the last two-to-three spots.
And while in most tournaments being the best seed you can possibly be is important, that’s not the case in the Southland, because anyone truly can beat anyone else on a given day.
Nicholls knows that first-hand, as they entered the tournament last year as the No. 8 seed and promptly mercy-ruled No. 1 seed Texas State in the opening game.
“It doesn’t matter,” Thibodeaux said in regards to seeding. “You saw what we did to the 1-seed last year. I don’t see a whole lot of difference between the 12th place team and the first place team in our league. … It’s not a big difference at all.”
So keeping the turnaround going and getting back to the Southland Tournament is the goal the final few weeks of the season at Nicholls.
If they keep taking care of business, their coach believes everything will be just fine, no matter what their seed might be.
“I just want to get in and win that thing and we’ll worry about everything else after that,” Thibodeaux said. “Because we know we can beat everyone in our league. But we have to play that way. Obviously, we want to finish as high as we can, so yeah, let’s see if we can get in as the No. 3 or the No. 4 seed. Who knows? That’s fine. But regardless, I like our chances every time we step onto the field. Whether we step on the field as the No. 8 or the No. 1 seed, that doesn’t matter to us. We just want to get in – get in and make a push to win it.”
Nicholls State outfielder Bear Comer makes a running catch during a game this season. Since a slow start to conference play, Nicholls has been hot, winning nine of their past 14 games to get back into the mix for a spot in the Southland Conference Tournament. NSU SPORTS
