Not your ordinary No. 4 seed
Eagles ( 42- 14) fly into regional
FAYETTEVILLE — Texas Southern’s baseball team is 20- 32 this season. Holy Cross is 23- 27. Radford is 27- 30. Maryland- Baltimore County is 23- 23. Sacramento State is 32- 27. Ohio is 31- 26.
Those teams are No. 4 seeds in the NCAA Tournament.
So is Oral Roberts University. But the Golden Eagles are 42- 14.
“Our 4 seed is not a 4 seed,” said Arkansas Razorbacks Coach Dave Van Horn, whose team plays Oral Roberts at Baum Stadium on Friday night in the NCAA Fayetteville Regional. “Our 4 seed isa 1 or a 2.
“They’re the team that nobody wants to see pop up as a 4. There’s no No. 1 anywhere that wants to see Oral Roberts and have to face them in Game 1.
“Obviously, they know how to win.”
Oral Roberts Coach Ryan Folmar paused for a few seconds when asked if he was surprised the NCAA Tournament selection committee made his team a No. 4 seed.
“That’s for somebody else to decide,” he said. “I know this — we’ve played well. We really like our team.”
Oral Roberts won the Summit League regularseason and tournament championships and went
5- 6 against teams in the NCAA Tournament field.
This season, the Golden Eagles are 2- 1 against Big 12 Tournament champion Oklahoma State and 1- 1 against Missouri State, the other two teams in the Fayetteville regional.
Oral Roberts has won nine consecutive games and is the last team to beat Oklahoma State, 11- 7 on May 16.
So the Golden Eagles did something Texas Tech, West Virginia and Texas couldn’t do against the Cowboys in the Big 12 Tournament.
“I think when you get to this time of the season, you want to try to be playing your best baseball, and we feel like we’re doing that,” Folmar said. “I feel like we’re getting hot at the right time.”
Folmar said Oral Roberts
junior left- hander Miguel Ausua ( 11- 2, 1.67 ERA) will start against the Razorbacks.
Ausua’s fastball hits between 86 and 90 mph, Folmar said, and he also throws a slider, curveball and changeup. He has 79 strikeouts and 27 walks in 861/ innings. 3
“He’s got good stuff,” Folmar said. “He’s pitched in our rotation all year long and been extremely consistent. He’s been the same guy every time he’s gone out and taken the ball.”
Junior right- hander Tyler Stout ( 2- 3, 1.72 ERA) leads the
Golden Eagles’ bullpen with 11 saves.
“He’s a tough kid that’s competitive,” Folmar said. “He comes right at you. He’s got a bulldog type mentality.
“He’s just one of those guys, that when you hand the ball to him, you know what you’re going to get.”
Folmar didn’t hesitate when asked if Stout has the type of arm where he can pitch in every game this weekend if needed. “Absolutely,” Folmar said. Oral Roberts has hit 67 home runs with a .294 team batting average, led by junior center field Noah Cummings (. 325, 14 home runs, 69 runs batted in), senior first baseman Brent Williams (. 271, 15, 50), junior catcher Matt Whatley (. 307, 11, 45) and junior shortstop Dylan Snypes (. 329, 0, 37).
“We have some depth to our lineup,” Folmar said. “We’ve got a lot of experience in our lineup, guys that have
done it before.
“We feel like we have some guys that can hurt you throughout the lineup. But we know what we’re facing this weekend.
“We’ve going to have to be really good with our situational offense and make sure that we move runners when we need to, and we’re going to have make big, big swings in big moments.”
Whatley and Cummings started for Oral Roberts when the Razorbacks beat the Golden Eagles 8- 6 in the Stillwater Regional in 2015.
Whatley went 3 for 5 with 3 runs and stole a base. Cummings was 1 for 4.
“I don’t know if it helps, but it doesn’t hurt, for sure,” Folmar said of having players who faced the Razorbacks. “I know this — our guys feel confident to go in there.
“We feel like if we play well, we’re going to have an opportunity to win.”