The Bulldog baseball team (22-13-1, 6-3 WCC) kicks off a 13-game roadtrip tonight in Santa Clara against the last-place Broncos (15-22, 2-7). After dropping the final two games of the series to St. Mary's at PBC last weekend, the Zags are now second place in the conference and are no longer nationally-ranked. But after (hopefully) finishing off the weak SCU squad, Gonzaga plays some non-conference games to toughen them up against BYU and Oregon before finishing off the trip against mediocre Portland and Pepperdine teams.
Read below the jump for a preview of the Santa Clara series...
The road shouldn't scare the boys at all: they opened this season with an 18-game stretch and went 10-7-1 against some extremely difficult teams like Oregon State and Fresno State.
Pitching has been Santa Clara's downfall this season: it says a lot about your team when your ace (Cory Hall) is 3-3. The team ERA is average compared to the rest of the conference, but looking at line scores, the Broncos give up runs early and have trouble scoring late in games, something that will play well for the Zags. We have a tendency to score late in games, especially close ones...but with the matchup this weekend, I don't anticipate any very close contests.
We'll see Carpenter, Olson, and Gonzales go again this weekend. For a great story about Olson's season, check out this link from the GU Bulletin:
http://www.gonzagabulletin.com/a-summer-removed-a-season-improved-1.2186261
Roll Zags!