Creighton loses a ‘baseball’ game to UC Davis 12-1

College baseball is sort of weird, especially in the BIG EAST.

There are scheduling nightmares for the 7-team conference because they don’t start conference play until April, so the likes of UC Davis come to town because they run their scholastic curriculum on trimesters instead of semesters or quarters. The Aggies just finished finals, haven’t played a game in 12 days, so they come to Omaha on a Sunday to play a 3 game series, ending on a Tuesday night, against the Bluejays.

Weird.

Creighton’s ace Rollie Lacy wasn’t on his game today. Perhaps it was the cloudy skies and mid-40 weather that got into his dome, perhaps it was the 12 day lay-off UC Davis had coming into the series that ultimately woke up their sleepy bats, perhaps he just couldn’t locate his fastball worth a damn.

By the time the 27th out had arrived, just 3 hours after the first pitch was served up, Creighton sulked back into their clubhouse with a 12-1 loss. Acquiring just four hits against a pair of southpaws from Davis, California, the offense had opportunities to make an impact but poor baserunning and a general lack of an awareness quickly put that to rest.

Take, for instance, the bottom of the third inning, that featured runners on the corners and just one out. After a Parker Upton single to drive in the first and only run of the game, Upton got bamboozled at first as he watched a line drive off the bat of Isaac Collins and failed to get back to first base in a timely manner. This is commonly referred to as a TOOTBLAN, or if you’re new to this, a ‘thrown out on the bases like a nincompoop.’

If a TOOTBLAN is a statistic, then Creighton acquired four of them. Here’s all four, in detail:

• B1 - Tommy Luevano walks, gets caught wandering off the bag on Orlando Razo’s second consecutive pick-off try to first.
• B3 - Aforementioned doubled-off liner, with Parker Upton wandering off the bag at first.
• B7 - After a Will Robertson walk, Jason Allberry lifted a can of corn fly ball to center, only for the centerfielder to muff the catch, yet Robertson had already trotted back to first assuming the catch was made, was forced out at 2nd on a throw from center.
• B8 - After a Michael Emodi Meat Unit (HBP), Bryce Only lined out to third, only for Emodi to get caught breaking for second, then get doubled up at first.

With that sort of inept ability to run the bags, and after Rollie Lacy was pulled after giving up 10 hits and 7 earned runs in 2 innings pitched, the result was never really in doubt.

Austin Stroschein came in to relieve Lacy, threw 2.1 innings and gave up 2 earned.

Houston Glad had a pretty great outing, retiring 11 of the 14 batters he saw, striking out three of them while allowing just one run to score.

John Sakowski came in in the ninth to try to stitch the game up, yet gave up a massive two run dong to UC Davis’s Alex Aguiar - who ended the affair with 3 rbi’s. He eventually shut down the final three batters in a valiant effort that the half dozen people left in the stadium will never forget.

Creighton fell to 5-12 on the season, their incredible 4 game winning streak now in the dust bin of baseball history. UC Davis improved to 6-10 on the year.

These two squads will face off again tomorrow night for the second game of the series. First pitch is at 6:30.

Stats!!!