Cougs turn triple play, beat Saint Mary’s

Good morning Coug fans. You may not like this whole springing forward thing now, especially if you have young kids or dogs (I have neither), but just wait until 6 p.m. tonight when you suddenly realize you might be able to get nine holes in before sundown.

Hell, where I live you can now ski in the morning and golf in the afternoon. This is great!

Springing forward is the sign that spring is just down the road, and that means a lot of things (allergies, pale Washingtonians suddenly emerging from their winter bunkers, etc.), but baseball in particular.

Oh yeah, it’s also Selection Sunday, but your Washington State Cougars won’t be selected for anything today. Those days are long gone. In fact, those days are in Charlottesville, Virginia as the probable overall no. 1 seed, but let’s not think about that.

Let’s turn our attention to baseball. The Coug baseball team is now 4-7 on the season after defeating Saint Mary’s 2-1 yesterday. Two solo home runs was all the support starting pitcher Scotty Sunitsch needed. Sunitsch gave up zero earned runs through seven innings in the win.

The Cougs also turned a triple play for the first time since 1999:

Impressive play by catcher Cal Waterman.

James Rudkin and Blake Clanton had the home runs for Washington State.

The Cougs are back on the diamond today for the fourth and final game of the series against the Gaels.

Baseball

Sunitsch Pitches Cougars Past Saint Mary’s, 2-1 - Washington State University
The Cougs also turned a triple play for the first time since 1999, when they did it at Arizona State.

Tennis

Did you know the Washington State tennis squad is 14-1? Their only defeat came at the hands of Kansas State. The 14-1 record is the best by any Pac-12 school as conference matches begin today.

Here are the Pac-12 standings. WSU is only in the middle because it hasn’t completed any conference matches:

Impressive.

Cougars Open Pac-12 Play at Oregon - Washington State University
The Cougars travel to Eugene, Ore. to open Pac-12 Conference play at Oregon, Sunday, March 11 at 11 a.m. at the Student Tennis Center. The following day they travel north for a nonconference match against Portland at noon. The Cougars enter the week with a 14-1 record, while Oregon enters at 9-3 and Portland 3-6. Oregon is ranked No. 21 nationally.

NCAA Tournament

There is absolutely nothing WSU-related here, but given it’s Selection Sunday, I figured I’d add a brief section on the NCAA Tournament.

Today’s selection show is on TBS (not CBS, like it traditionally has been) and will reveal all the teams that qualified prior to showing the brackets. That’s new, and we’ll see how that goes.

Arizona got the Pac-12’s automatic berth by beating USC last night in a battle between two teams that had assistants arrested by the FBI. HOW MANY CONFERENCES CAN BOAST THAT?!?!

I enjoyed this tweet:

There’s a cloud hanging over the NCAA Tournament, what with the FBI investigation and all. I’m sure somebody will come up with a Bingo card or a drinking game that takes into account how many times the broadcasters mention the issue.

Be that as it may, this is one of the best times of the year on the sports calendar. Enjoy it, even if our team never had a sniff at even being considered for the tournament.