Collegiate Times

Baseball is a game of adjustments, and in the demoralizing 15-3 loss to North Carolina A&T, the Hokies were never able to adjust to the biting slider of opposing pitcher Chris Eggers (2-0).  The 5’ 10’’ 190lb pitcher from Sanford, N.C. turned in a complete performance against the Hokies; throwing all nine innings, striking out four, and scattering four hits and three walks amidst the majority of weak groundballs and fly outs produced by Hokie batters.

  “That kid made pitches and executed down in the zone,” said head coach Pete Hughes. “We gotta make better adjustments offensively if we want to be a consistent hitting team. When he’s gonna throw slider, slider, slider, we’ve gotta be able to hit that slider and we didn’t do it except for that one inning.”

The lone bright spot for the Hokies came in the three run seventh courtesy of back to back home runs by third baseman Luke Padgett, and left fielder Steve Bumbry. Unlike the Aggies, the Hokies were unable to capitalize on the windy conditions.

 
“Take nothing away from them, because we hit against the same wind and didn’t take advantage of it,” Hughes said. “Offensively we could’ve taken advantage of the same thing and we just didn’t make adjustments to a kid who had his slider going.”

While the first two innings went smoothly for Hokie starter Greg Fryman (1-1), the Aggies touched him for two runs in the third and never looked back. The visiting team’s starting lineup, who in their previous six games had only totaled 16 runs, feasted on the Hokie pitching staff, finishing with 15 hits to go along with their 15 runs.

“We just gotta get the ball down in the zone. period,” Hughes said.” I thought our kid did a really good job, grinding it out, and he gave us a chance to get back in the game. But he made some mistakes. The key is to get groundballs, and the only way to get groundballs is to keep the ball down.”

 
While Coach Hughes admitted that the Hokies are playing around some key injuries, Fryman’s struggles resulted from sporadic control, not early season fatigue.

“He made some mistakes, this is probably his seventh outing counting pre-season and into the seasons that he’s been over 100 something pitches, but he got hurt on his 40^th pitch because he left the ball up, you can’t leave the ball up in the zone,” Hughes said. “We’ll be fine, that’s just baseball”

The Hokies (5-4) play North Carolina A&T (2-5) at English Field, tomorrow (3/3) at 2:00 p.m., and then again on Sunday (3/4) at 1:00 p.m.  These games and consequent games against VCU and Richmond lead up to their first conference games against Georgia Tech March 9th, 10th, and 11th.