Periodically throughout the season, senior desginated hitter Aaron Cook will supply a blog for Fighting Sioux fans on the ins and outs of the UND baseball program. Cook's blog will also appear on www.pingbaseball.com as he is one of a several Division I baseball players supplying blogs for the collegiate baseball site.
Cook burst onto the scene last season for the Sioux as a redshirt junior, batting .328 with six home runs and 28 RBI. All three of those totals ranked second on the team. The Erskine, Minn., native had just three at-bats in his UND career entering the program's first as a Division I member.
Volume 6:
Conference Play Begins
After a tough non-conference schedule, Great West Conference play has begun. This is the first year of baseball in the Great West, so we will be looking to take the inaugural title!
Our first series was in Orem, Utah as we took on the Utah Valley Wolverines. UVU was one of the preseason favorites to take the conference title, so we knew we had a tough team to play against. In the first game the Wolverines jumped on us early and took the lead in the second. They never looked back from there. They put up runs in what seemed like every inning and took the first game 12-2.
The second day was a doubleheader, as all conference games will be, with the seven-inning game coming first. In the first game we took an early 2-0 lead in the top of the first. UVU was quick to answer with one in the first and two in the second. The score would remain this way until the sixth when UVU blew things open with a seven-run inning. We made a rally with four of our own, but still came up short. In the second game UVU put up another seven-spot in the third. We answered back with four in the fourth, but they did the same. The game went back-and-forth from there with each team scoring a few runs, but things never really got any closer as we dropped the game 15-9 and fell to 0-3 in the conference.
In the final game of the series we jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first. UVU would answer once again by scoring single runs in the first, second and third innings. Late in the game the score was tied up at 3-3, but UVU was able to put up three in the seventh to break the tie. We made things interesting in the ninth. With two outs, we hit a two-run homer, followed by a double to put the tying runner in scoring position. But, unfortunately a line out would end the game. This was the story of the game for us. We seemed barrel a lot of balls up, but they all seemed to be right at someone and we fell to 0-4 in conference.
The second series of conference play took place in Edinburg, Texas as we took on the University of Texas- Pan America. The first game was very close most of the way. We were getting great pitching, which would be the case for the entire series. Late in the game we were able to put some runs on the board and captured our first conference win of the year 6-2.
The second day was a very hot day with high humidity. It was something that we haven't experienced in a while. After falling behind early 7-1, we made a rally and had a big inning of our own to take an 8-7 lead. UTPA was able to tie the game up and pushed it into extras though. The seven-inning game turned into a nine-inning game, but we were able to prevail 9-8 in the end. Our bullpen did a great job keeping us in this game and giving us a chance to win in the end.
The second game of the day was cruising along and we were up 1-0 in the sixth. UTPA then managed to put up a run in the sixth and seventh as our offense just could not get anything going. With the score remaining the same in the bottom of the eighth, the game was delayed due to lightening. During the delay, the rain started to come down and showed no signs of stopping. We would not be able to finish the game and because of conference rules it could not be suspended because five innings had been completed, so we had to take the disappointing loss.
In the final game of the series we took control early. After taking the lead, we never looked back. There was a slight scare in the eighth inning, but we held on for a 6-3 win. This was a big win for us. It gave us our first Great West series victory. It also pushed our conference record to 3-5 as we are right in the middle of the standings.
Next up for us, is our first home series of the year. We will be taking on New York Tech this weekend. I hope to see you all out at Kraft Field this weekend! Our first game is on Friday at 3 p.m.
