Friday, April 27, 2007

Mizzou Baseball Redux: MU 25, Texas Tech 0 on April Fools' Day, 2005

MU Wrecks Tech
(Columbia Daily Tribune, April 2, 2005)

The Missouri baseball team’s potent offense didn’t hit the ball in the early innings last night. It never got the chance.

The Tigers put up 17 runs in the second inning in a 25-0 rout of Texas Tech last night on Simmons Field. For the first nine of those runs, the Tigers didn’t put the ball in play.. . ."It’s shocking really," MU Coach Tim Jamieson said. "They’re a good baseball team, and it’s just an aberration on their side. Tomorrow will be a completely different day, I’m confident of that.". . ."

Obviously, they were giving us a lot of runs by walking us," said Boone, who was 4 for 4, "but when they started throwing strikes, we started hitting them. They didn’t just give us everything. We did earn some of those."

MU’s half of the inning lasted close to an hour, leaving Scherzer’s durability for the remainder of the game in question. Scherzer faced the challenge of staying warm during the lull.

"It was a long wait," Jamieson said. "It was like a rain delay in some regards. He came back and did a great job."

Scherzer pitched the equivalent of an inning in the bullpen to keep his focus.

"It’s much easier to pitch with the lead," said Scherzer, who improved to 6-1. "But it’s a challenge for me to get my body ready, to get my mind ready to pitch while all this fun is going on in the dugout. It’s kind of a distraction, but I like that distraction."

Raiders lose in nightmare
(Lubbock Journal, April 2, 2005)

"I don't know what to say," Tech head coach Larry Hays said. "Their guy pitched really well and we got behind in the first inning, and we called on some pitchers to do some work for us and they just didn't do it. I've seen that happen a lot but not that bad. I've never had anything happen like that.". . . .

"They didn't give up, they just lost momentum," Scherzer said. "No Big 12 team will ever give up. As long as you keep working ahead of hitters, they can't gain momentum that way."

Missouri flawless in victory over Red Raiders
(Kendall Rogers, RosenblattReport.com)

While quite complex in some areas, the basic fundamentals of baseball are not hard to understand – you throw the ball, hit the ball and catch the ball. But on Friday night in Columbia, Texas Tech skipper Larry Hays had to feel like the manager in the famous baseball movie Bull Durham, because his club played perhaps the worst game in the school's history, losing to Missouri 25-0.

Though the loss was difficult enough to handle form a pitching standpoint, the most notable happening on the night has to be the no-hitter that Missouri hurlers Max Scherzer and Michael Cole combined to throw. Scherzer threw seven scoreless innings, earning his sixth win of the season, while Cole threw two innings of scoreless work in just his third appearance of the year.

from the Columbia Daily Tribune
Saturday, April 3: John McKee drew a one-out walk and advanced to second on Adam Lawford’s balk. Hunter Mense singled up the middle to score McKee, and James Boone followed that with a towering fly ball to center that neither center fielder Fuller nor left fielder Chris Williams seemed to see right away. The ball fell in for a double, scoring Mense. Then Jacob Priday sent a bloop to right field that fell among three Red Raiders.

"The lights here aren’t the greatest lights, and that makes it tough if you haven’t played here," Texas Tech Coach Larry Hays said. "Our guys just never saw the ball. That’s discouraging."

Sunday, April 4: "When you get boat-raced 25-0 and then" Saturday "give up three runs because you can’t see a ball, you just feel like you’re snake bit," Hays said. "We hung in there today and battled.

from Lubbock Online:
Saturday, April 3: "We played good," Hays said. "We pitched really well. The sky and playing with these lights, you'd like to get mad at somebody for that. The first night, we got out here and tried to pick the ball up, and I got out in the outfield and I couldn't do it, and that hurt

from RosenblattReport.com Message Boards:

Red Raider Dave: Worst night in Texas Tech Baseball history.

RaiderJM: Tech was dreadfult tonight. Despite that, here's a BIG congrats on the no-no! It's got to be incredibly tough to keep a no hitter going in a situation where you lead by so much. Incredible!bgrams14: Yeah, but when a team gets beat by 25 in baseball to a team that in reality actually isn't incredibly great, and still has to play that team the next two days, they might have a feeling of fear and/or even worthlessness because I have never seen a score that ugly in baseball, neither have most, if not all of you guys. As far as Missouri's talent level that I said wasn't incredibly great in the last paragraph, don't get me wrong, Mizzou's a solid team and all that, but not a serious threat for the Big 12 regular season or tournament titles, and probably won't be able to hang up there with some of the top teams in the league, especially late in the season heading into Big 12 tourney and NCAA tourney time.

from HornFans.com:

Horn87: I have to laugh, because all the tech announcer (Mark Finkner) has been talking about all week is how Mizzou was overrated because of their RPI (in the 250 or so)--but Mizzou has had tech's number for the last 4-5 years or so

roofless: Let's not overlook this: Missouri's 2 pitchers no-hit the sand ags AND struck out a combined 18 batters. That in itself is beyond incredible. You just don't lose games that badly. Clearly, Tech is either having some serious problems in the dugout or they just stopped trying as of the middle of the 2nd. Either way Coach Hays has some 'splainng to do.