Colonels add 2 transfers
June 5, 2014
Making a Difference: Volunteers a huge benefit at TGMC, despite few numbers
June 5, 2014
While most college baseball fans sat and enjoyed the opening rounds of the 2014 NCAA Tournament, the Nicholls baseball team intentionally avoided the action.
Colonels coach Seth Thibodeaux said he hasn’t watched an inning of the tournament on TV. When skimming through the newspaper, he intentionally jumps over stories about LSU, UL-Lafayette or anything else relating to college baseball.
It’s still a sore subject for the Colonels, who are turning their attention toward plotting the path they’ll take to reach the NCAA Tournament in future years.
The 2014 season was a historic run for the Colonels, who finished the Southland Conference season as the league’s runner-up. But while Colonels’ coach Seth Thibodeaux is proud of the accomplishment, he said his eyes are already focused on the next step in Nicholls’ progress. That step, he said, would be a year where Nicholls wins 8-10 more games and earns the resume to be an at-large team in the 64-team field – the same path taken by Sam Houston State this season.
“We had a nice season,” Thibodeaux said. “We accomplished a lot of our goals, and we met a lot of our expectations, and we competed for a championship on the last day of the season. … But we didn’t totally reach everything that we wanted, so now we’re looking to the future and looking to do what we have to do to still be playing at this time next year. We want to see our name come up on the screen when the selection show is playing.”
For Nicholls, the 2014 Southland Conference season was memorable. The Colonels won 21 of their 30 regular season league games, winning eight of their 10 weekend Southland series.
But as the season has come and passed, Thibodeaux said the games he remembers most are some of the Colonels’ near-misses in midweek games, mostly against top-flight competition.
The Colonels lost three-straight close games to Houston to open the season. The Cougars were a No. 2 seed in the Baton Rouge Regional – a consensus Top 25 team throughout the season.
From there, Nicholls lost to Southern Illinois, Jackson State and Tulane – all by just one run. The Colonels’ heartbreaks continued against NCAA Tournament National Seeds LSU and UL-Lafayette. Nicholls was 0-3 combined against the statewide powers, all losses that were close in the final innings. Thibodeaux said finding a way to win those games would have pushed the 32-win Colonels to a 40-win season, fully in line for an NCAA Tournament bid, regardless of the results of the Southland Conference Tournament.
“That’s where our mindset has got to change,” Thibodeaux said. “Now, let’s go out and win 35-40 games and let’s put ourselves in the RPI talk and in the position where we get in a regional regardless of if we win the league or not. It’s all about progression and taking that next step forward. … We’re very hungry for postseason action in Thibodaux. I can’t help but to dream at night of my team competing at either Lafayette or Alex Box Stadium at the Regionals.”
But while the 2014 season ended shorter than Nicholls would have hoped, Thibodeaux will quickly say that the team’s run was an unquestioned success.
The 32-win season marked the first time in the coach’s tenure that the Colonels won 30 or more games in a season. That drought went far beyond Thibodeaux and had existed since the 1993 season.
In the past year, the Colonels also achieved their first winning baseball season since 2002 this season. Thibodeaux said honors and accolades like 30 wins and an above .500 record are huge for the program, because it marks the end of the era when the team was satisfied being an underachiever.
The coach added that the mental hurdles the Colonels climbed this past season will go a long way in allowing the team to continue to push forward into the future.
“We hadn’t won 30 games in a season here for 21 years,” Thibodeaux said. “So you had to recapture that tradition and recapture that spirit and recapture that pride. Somehow, we had to overcome the mindset of, ‘I don’t think this is possible anymore.’ That barrier is broken, and it was broken with ease. There was never any doubt. So now, it’s just time to push this thing farther.”
But with the mental barrier gone, the Colonels’ players will head to summer baseball to polish their crafts. When they return, they will embark in a summer conditioning program to try and get bigger, faster and stronger.
That vision and final destination is easier to see after a successful season is under your belt. Thibodeaux said the journey will not stop until the Colonels dog pile on a mound to complete the Southland Conference Tournament.
The Colonels’ lose a talented bunch of seniors off this year’s squad, and the team’s 2014 schedule will be tough, a slate glittered with Top 25 foes. But Thibodeaux said it doesn’t matter because he believes his own players will be better and more equipped for the journey in the next go-round.
“We want to be playing at this time every, single year,” Thibodeaux said. “I can’t stand to even turn on the TV. I haven’t read a newspaper or watched anything the last few days .It just burns a hole in my heart. I know who is playing where through hearsay, but I can’t follow it. It burns a hole in my heart. I just want to be playing next year.”
