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March 19, 2014
Colonels win 1, then fall in Southland Conference Quarterfinals
March 19, 2014
“Stay the course.”
That was the message the Nicholls State baseball team kept repeating last week, even as the Colonels were facing their biggest hitting slump of the season after being no-hit in a 5-0 home loss to BYU back on March 6.
It didn’t take the team long to put that performance out of its memory. The Colonels proceeded to score six runs, 10 runs and six runs, respectively, over its next three games to close the weekend with a series split against the Cougars.
From there, they moved on to take two of three games from Houston Baptist in the opening series of conference play to move to 10-10 overall entering the week.
It has been a bit of an up-and-down start to the season, but Nicholls coach Seth Thibodeaux says the team’s confidence hasn’t wavered.
“Our team doesn’t panic,” he said. “They understand our strengths and weaknesses and what we need to do to be successful.”
Now the team hopes it can sustain those strengths and carry its recent hot hitting into conference play, which continues Friday when Nicholls travels to Lamar for a three-game series.
Nicholls as a team entered the week hitting only .234, last in the Southland Conference, but they had scored five runs or more in seven of their last 10 contests.
Regardless of some of the early season struggles at the plate — which began when the team was swept at the University of Houston and began the year with a 25-inning scoreless drought — the Colonels’ approach has stayed the same.
“It’s a long season and there’s no need to worry this early in the season,” said Nicholls outfielder Keith Cormier, who hit a team-best .309 in his first 18 games. “We’re going to pull through and do what we do.”
What the Colonels do often enough is play small-ball. They’re speedy enough to where they’re able to bunt and stay aggressive on the bases while putting pressure on opposing teams’ infielders.
That was on display in Nicholls’ 6-1 victory over BYU on March 8. In that game, the Colonels forced six errors from a Cougars team that came into the night with a .970 fielding percentage.
That sort of performance goes hand in hand with the team’s aggressive approach. The message being: the Colonels may not be able to out-slug many teams, but they can put pressure on even the best fielding clubs and force them to adapt to Nicholls’ style of play.
“It’s all due to the pace that we play at,” Cormier said. “We’re a very athletic team and a very confident team. We come out here and have one thing on our mind, and that’s to put pressure on the defense and win a game.”
In spite of some hiccups along the way, that approach seems to be working as Nicholls entered the week fifth in the conference in runs scored through 18 games.
And it’s not always a matter of playing the short game. The Colonels’ 27 doubles are a good indicator that the team has some gap-to-gap pop in its bats.
Still, Thibodeaux knows the key to his lineup is for them to stay within their approach.
“We work really hard on our short game, and we work really hard on our base-running,” Thibodeaux said. “Sometimes we’re going to get ourselves into trouble because we’re so aggressive, but a lot of times, if you stay the course, it’s going to pay off in the end.”
For his part, Cormier has become one of the Colonels’ hottest hitters of late and is a big part in the team’s recent resurgence.
“Eventually, this team is going to get to every pitcher,” said Cormier. “We’re getting a lot of things done and in an aggressive way.”
The Colonels return to the diamond this coming weekend with a three-game road Southland tilt with Lamar. The Colonels are 2-1 in league play after winning their season-opening conference series with Houston Baptist.
Lamar enters play 1-2 in the Southland Conference.
The Cardinals lost two of three games with Southeastern Louisiana this past weekend.
Nicholls baseball slugger Tyler Duplantis takes a rip during a game this season. The Colonels are 2-1 in Southland Conference play, but they believe that they can do much more in the coming weeks if they can get a more consistent effort from their offense. The Colonels’ bats have yet to catch fire this season. As a team, Nicholls is hitting just .234, last in the Southland.
