2008 Woodie Awards
Walks Haunt Baseball In Loss
Baseball
Kevin Vellturo
Issue date: 4/3/08 Section: Sports
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The Huskies jumped out to a 4-1 lead after a four-run third inning. Gordon Stevens led off with a double to deep center field. Harold Brantley followed with a single and Pierre LePage walked to load the bases with no outs. Elliot Glynn and senior co-captain Pat Mahoney slapped back-to-back singles to put the Huskies on the board. Mike Olt drove in another run with a groundout to third.
The lead was short lived, however, as the Eagles (13-14) came back in the top of the fourth and scored six runs off starting pitcher Dusty Odenbach. Three of them came on Butera's a deep home run to left field to take a 7-4 lead, which they would not relinquish.
Leonard settled down after the third inning, not allowing a UConn base runner to get past second base and at one point retired seven batters in a row.
Head coach Jim Penders cited his team's lack of control as one of the reasons for the loss.
"When you walk nine batters like we did today, you're not going to win a lot of games," Penders said.
Contributing to the Huskies' control problem was junior co-captain David Erickson, who had three walks in the seventh inning; matching his total for the entire season. Erickson also is in possession of the lowest ERA on the team, 0.82. Despite the walks, Pender is not worried.
"I'm not going to over-analyze that," Penders said. "He was pretty upset but anyone can have an off day. He's going to be fine."
After the third inning it seemed as though UConn (14-12) had the game in control, but according to Penders, they gave it away by not responding after Boston College took back the lead.
"We kind of got back on our heels after the fourth inning," Penders said. "We didn't respond and that really hurt us."
Mahoney echoed his coach's feelings about the team's disappearance of offensive production after the third inning.
"We've been swinging the bat pretty well lately," said Mahoney. "Some days you have it and some days you don't. They took the momentum away from us in the top half of the fourth and we couldn't come back."
Despite the loss, Penders still found a positive to take out of Wednesday's game - the pitching of freshman Michael Hashem.
"You can't take an awful lot of positives into tomorrow's game," Penders said. "But Hashem pitched really well. Dusty [Odenbach] pitched well the first three innings too. He looks like the old Dusty."
Hashem pitched two scoreless innings in relief, only allowing two hits and striking out one.
Mahoney made sure to stress that the loss will not affect the Huskies heading into Thursday's game against Fairfield.
"BC is a good team, better than most of our midweek opponents," Mahoney said. "Our most important game of the season is tomorrow because it's tomorrow. We definitely will not take Fairfield lightly."
Contact Kevin Vellturo at Kevin.Vellturo@UConn.edu.
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