Holliday evaluates season after early NCAA exit
Two weeks ago, the OSU baseball team was celebrating a Bedlam series win and Big 12 regular-season title. Last week, it was in the Big 12 Tournament championship game.
Six days later, the Cowboys are cleaning out their lockers and heading into the offseason after an early postseason exit.
Oral Roberts and Dallas Baptist combined to outscore OSU 24-8 in the NCAA Stillwater Regional this weekend, sending the Cowboys packing as the first team eliminated in the regional after two games. An anticlimactic ending for a team that entered tournament play as host and winners of 11 of its last 15 games.
There was numbness.
“The finality of it, no matter how many seasons you coach, you don’t master what it feels like for the season to come to an end,” OSU coach Josh Holliday said.
There was frustration.
“We lost by 14 runs – s--- happens, you lose games,” second baseman Roc Riggio said after Saturday’s 18-4 loss to Dallas Baptist. “But that doesn’t define this program. That one game doesn’t define this club. It definitely doesn’t define me. We’ve got a bunch of good men, and we’re not gonna hang our heads.”
The Cowboys have made the NCAA Regionals all 10 seasons with Holliday leading the program, but they again failed to make it out of their home regional in back-to-back seasons. Coupling that with a 41-20 record and a share of the Big 12 regular season title, how does Holliday evaluate this season?
“We’re all disappointed in how it all ended, but I don’t think anyone will ever be satisfied until you go win the final game,” Holliday said. “Obviously we’re not proud of the nature of the game (Saturday), but I can’t sit here and be unappreciative of the effort of the ballclub and the way they represented us, or the way they played in many stretches during the season.”
OSU started the year 22-7, including a series win against Texas, and entered the middle of conference play as a top-15 team. The Cowboys dropped series to TCU and West Virginia during the next two weeks and tumbled out of the rankings after a 1-6 stretch.
But the offense ignited in the final month of the regular season and elevated the Cowboys out of the slump, scoring double-digit run totals in 10 of the final 17 games. OSU went 14-3 to close the season and surged back into the conference title hunt.
Still, the success of a season often corresponds to postseason achievements. Trophies. Championships. The Cowboys haven’t made it to the College World Series since 2016 and have only one Super Regional appearance since.
“If the only way you can celebrate and appreciate a club is simply by the final result of the last game, there’ll be a lot of empty seasons in a lot of people’s hearts,” Holliday said. “So I would hope (the fans) would have a bigger view of the club and appreciate all the effort that went into it.”
Holliday met with his team in a postgame huddle Saturday and said the hurt and embarrassment was overwhelming. The high-flying offense the Cowboys had leaned on was unable to produce, and the Big 12 strikeout-leading pitching staff gave up six home runs and a .395 batting average in the regional.
“The only thing I was able to share with the kids in the brief huddle was to not let the empty feeling and the numbness that we have right now, that we just competed through for the last three hours, be the lasting memory of this team and what they’ve done for the last four months,” Holliday said. “That perspective at some point will be allowed and encouraged, and it’s real.”
But this weekend will be a tough one to shake.
“A disappointing finish, sure. Everyone has the right to view the team and the season in whichever way they wish,” Holliday said. “I will always view this team through all the good things that they did and all the moments that made us proud. And sure, we’re all gonna have a scar from this. There’s no question. There’s just no way around that.