Chilling out to come on hot
Faced with a nearly two-week break from competition earlier this month, Augie Garr ido and his Texas baseball coaching staff got together and planned their course of action.
Pitching coach Skip Johnson suggested giving the players three days off. Garrido had a better idea.
“He said, ‘What about seven or eight?’” Johnson said.
According to Garrido and Johnson, this Big 12 championship seas on began to turn when the players turned off their minds and escaped from the game. The result was wins in six of their next seven games, including all four played in Tulsa at the conference tournament. On Sunday, the Longhorns beat Oklahoma State 6-3 for their fifth Big 12 title.
The Longhorns practiced just twice during the 13-day layoff.
“We didn’t want them to get back in touch with where they were,” Garrido said. “We wanted them to be able to see into the future, the opportunities that were in front of them.”
Earning his bonuses: Garrido pocketed $85,000 on Sunday — $10,000 for winning the Big 12 and an additional $75,000 for earning an NCAA regional bid.
In recent days, many of his dec isions were priceless.
Garrido benched Zane Gurwitz last week at Baylor for not hustling. Gurwitz responded by earni ng the MVP award at the Big 12 tournament. Garrido al so benched Brooks Marlow at Baylor, angering Marlow to the point he knocked in four runs in Tulsa and was named to the all-tournament team.
Also at Baylor, Johnson and Garrido set up their pitching rotation beautifully for the tournament by using three eventual starters — Parker French, Ty Culbreth and Connor Mayes — in game one.
Bored in the bullpen: Texas’ starters worked the first 33 innings of the tournament before giving way to the bullpen Sunday in the seventh inning. And the first reliever was French, who started and threw 127 pitches in Wednesday’s opener.
Extra bases: Sunday’s attendance was announced at 4,976. ... OSU coach Josh Holliday said the Cowboys’ Garrett McCain, who was hit in the helmet by a pitch in the seventh inning, was lucid in the dugout but bleeding near his eyebrow.