CARTERSVILLE, Ga. – One of the unpleasant facts of life for a baseball team representing a university or college that sits anywhere north of the Mason-Dixon line is the necessity to travel south to seek out nonconference games in February and March. It’s just the way it is considering it’s nearly impossible to play the game at a high level when snow sits on the field and the cold temperature has numbed a players’ hands and feet.
The University of Nebraska-Omaha (UNO) is a northern program that devised a plan to minimize the trials, tests and travails that can accompany nearly three weeks of travel while not being able to totally eliminate them. The Mavericks’ coaching staff, led by head coach Bob Herold, decided if they had to take their team on the road for 18 games in 25 days, they might as well make it as comfortable as possible by being in the same place for three of those four weekends.
Taking full advantage of the Perfect Game College Spring Swing at PG Park South at LakePoint, UNO was here for four games Feb. 19-21, four more Feb. 26-28 and four more this weekend, March 11-13. It was at Wichita (Kan.) State for a single game on March 1, went to Phoenix for a three-game set against Grand Canyon State March 4-6 and played a pair against the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo., March 8-9, but otherwise it’s been all LakePoint, all the time.
“You start to get more familiar with the fields, you’re familiar with the hotel you’re staying in and you’re kind of familiar with the places you’re going to eat,” UNO slugging fifth-year senior corner-infielder Clayton Taylor told PG when asked about the benefits of returning to the same place to play games. “The other great thing is you’re playing 12 different teams instead of the same team three or four times as you would be doing in a normal series.”
The competition has been varied. The Mavericks played games against Eastern Michigan, NJIT, Saint Louis and Arkansas State the first two weeks they were here, and this weekend they played Iowa, Bowling Green, Presbyterian and Seton Hall.
Regardless of the opponent, the players were able to settle into some sort of routine by returning to the Atlanta area time and again. The itinerary usually involved leaving Omaha on a Thursday and getting checked into the hotel that night. The team would get up and eat breakfast at the same time on that Friday morning and then leave for the field for a single game that day. More games were played Saturday and Sunday and the group would fly back to Omaha that Sunday night.
Herold took Mavericks teams to different locations in Florida to get their seasons started the previous 10 years but didn’t see any benefit from what seemed like a constant battle with rain. He acknowledged that rain was certainly a threat in North Georgia this time of year, but UNO didn’t have a single one of its 12 games rained out the three weekends it was here.
“There’s good competition down here and good baseball can be played anywhere,” Herold said. “This gives us a chance to play different teams in different locations, and actually it gives us a little bit of familiarity. We come back and we stay at the same hotel, we have the same bus driver, you know where the complex is – it’s a pretty good setup.”
PG College Spring Swing officials worked with UNO to make sure it got four games all three of the three-day weekends it was here, which meant a single game on Friday, a double-header with two different teams on Saturday and a single game on Sunday. That can play havoc with a normal Friday-Saturday-Sunday starting pitching rotation while also testing a players’ stamina.
“The guys have to get ready to play tired,” Herold said. “You’ve got to do whatever it is in baseball to make yourself come out for the amount of time you’re out there and play as hard as you can play; that’s how teams get better. It puts the guys in positions where it’s not easy for them. Their whole life is going to be adversity so let’s put them in adverse situations and see how they respond. If they don’t respond well, that’s a teaching moment … and coaching is just teaching as far as I’m concerned.”
That said, when a college teams plays 18 games on 15 game-days – all on the road – to start a season, there are going to be games when the players lose focus, and Herold used this weekend as an example. UNO’s game on Friday was against Iowa from the Big Ten, a team that advanced to an NCAA Regional last year and a home campus about 250 miles east of UNO’s. The Mavericks were excited to have the opportunity to face the Hawkeyes and responded with a 3-2 victory after trailing 2-0 in the first inning.
Their first of two games on Saturday was against Presbyterian College, a small NCAA D-I school located in Clinton, S.C., that in all likelihood no one on the UNO roster had ever heard of before. The players weren’t as mentally prepared as they were against Iowa and got thumped by the Blue Hose, 11-1. “It’s a learning process,” Herold said.
Taylor took a practical approach: “We’ve played a lot of games – it’s a heavy schedule – but hopefully it will prepare us for postseason play and what that’s going to be like. Just playing a lot of games always helps especially when you’re a northern team.”
This is Herold’s 17th season as the head coach at UNO but this is just the fifth season the baseball program has been classified as NCAA Division I; it is the first season it is eligible for NCAA postseason play. It turned out that four-year period of ineligibility had a lot of sting to it after the Mavericks won back-to-back Summit League championships in 2013 and 2014, its first two years as a member (Fort Wayne, North Dakota State, Oral Roberts, South Dakota State and Western Illinois are the league’s other baseball-playing schools).
But the transition has gone smoothly after an inaugural 2012 season when Omaha finished 12-36; it played only four home games that season, 36 road games and eight on neutral fields. The Mavs finished 27-22 overall in 2013 and won the Summit League title with a 20-6 record and went 31-20 and won a second Summit championship with a 15-9 mark in 2014. They took a step back with records of 21-31 and 12-18 last season.
This whole D-I transition is an uphill climb for UNO in one important aspect in that that it doesn’t have its own ballpark; it plays its home games at the Ball Park at Boys Town (Neb.), a high school field. There hasn’t been a field on the UNO campus for more than 50 years, according to Herold, and that hurts his recruiting efforts. “Kids come to schools to play on nice fields or they don’t come to your school,” he said, before quickly adding that he loves the kids he does have playing for him. “The kids fight; they do a really good job.”
Herold continued his thought: “This goes way beyond baseball, obviously. We want them to be men, we want them to be gentlemen and we want them to have the highest character possible, and we reinforce all that stuff. I don’t curse and swear and throw bats and if you want to play here you don’t get to either. I’m not trying to take everybody to church with me it’s just that there’s a right way to play.”
There is a solid group of seniors Herold is looking at to lead this team this season, including outfielder Alex Schultz, outfielder Cole Gruber and Taylor, who Herold has hitting 1-2-3 in the batting order and have pretty much been four-year starters. On the mound, senior right-hander Tyler Fox has been the Mavericks’ Friday night guy for three years now and Herold said he’s been the best pitcher on the staff since he first walked on campus in the fall of 2012.
Those guys and some underclassmen have been doing their jobs so far this season as Mavs’ hitters posted a team slash-line of .298/.357/.390 through their first 17 games (they went 9-8), with five every-day players hitting .293 or better.
Taylor slashed .356/.506/.678 with team-highs of five home runs and 27 RBI in those 17 games and he’s on pace to replicate or improve on what he did as a redshirt sophomore in 2014 (.342/.421/.599, 17 2Bs, 9 HRs, 48 RBI) and as a junior in 2015 (.308/.403/.490, 8 HRs, 42 RBI).
“It’s been a long five years but definitely a fun five years,” Taylor said. “When I committed to UNO it was a Division-II school so to be able to play for a Division I team for four years and now to be in the first year of postseason eligibility, it’s been great.”
Gruber was slashing .386/.449/.429 with 17 runs and 12 stolen bases after 17 games and Schultz was at .293/.361/.387. Other key contributors on offensive were sophomore outfielder Adam Caniglia (.347/.371/.439) and freshman Riley Herold (.328/.354/.377, 1 HR, 10 RBI).
“I do think our team swings the bat pretty good,” Herold said. “Hitting is pretty contagious. You get a couple of hits and the players start thinking, ‘If he can hit this guy, I can hit him, too.’”
Fox is off to great start, going 3-1 with a 2.91 ERA and 21 strikeouts and just four walks in 24 2/3 innings pitched. He was 6-2 with a 3.99 ERA as a true freshman in 2013, was named the Summit League Pitcher of the Year as a sophomore in 2014 when he went 9-1 with a 2.59 ERA and was 5-4, 2.88 as a junior last season. Sophomore right-hander Corey Binder is 3-0 with a 3.27 ERA and 16 strikeouts and three walks in 22 innings. Binder is from Vitoria, Minn., and is an alumnus of both the 2012 and 2013 Perfect Game Pitcher-Catcher Indoor Showcase held annually in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
“Leadership-wise, I think our seniors do a great job,” Taylor said. “What’s great about this year is up and down the lineup, up and down the bullpen and up and down the pitching rotation, everyone is contributing, not just underclassmen, not just upper-classmen. The parity on the team is really great, and if one guy isn’t hitting well there isn’t going to be a lot of pressure on him because there are other guys who can step up and get the job done.”
The Mavericks were scheduled to fly out of Atlanta Sunday night, heading home to Omaha with no big travel pans in the immediate future. They’ll have four days off before opening Summit League play with a three-day series (Fri.-Sun) against Fort Wayne at the Ball Park at Boys Town. Taylor feels like all the time this team spent together at LakePoint and points elsewhere will only make it stronger in the long run.
“The 10-day trip that we’re on right now has really brought people together because you’re seeing the same guys every day,” he said. “But even back home, you’re seeing (your teammates) every day so the guys get to know each other pretty well.” At the same time, will it feel good to climb off that airplane and start sleeping in your own bed for a change?
“It’s going to be a great week back home when we get a couple of days off,” Taylor exclaimed. “We’re looking forward to that for sure.”