BASEBALL: Irish look beyond injuries, head south
By JOE HETTLER
Sports Writer
With numerous players injured during last weekend's University of New Orleans Classic, the Notre Dame baseball team lost two out of three games. But instead of making excuses about their losses, head coach Paul Maineri and the Irish are looking forward to this weekend's Homestead Challenge held in Florida where the Irish will face Duquesne, Fairfield, Florida International and Savannah State.
"To be honest, in 20 years in coaching I've never seen a ration of injuries at one time like this and that's no exaggeration," said Mainieri. "Anytime you take the four quality players out of your line-up like we lost this weekend, it's certainly going to have an effect with your team. But I was really, really proud of the way that the replacements went in there and played. We competed real hard and I choose to look at the very positive aspect of this past weekend and those guys gained some great experience."
By the end of last weekend, the Irish were without freshman shortstop Matt Macri, sophomore second baseman Steve Sollman, third baseman/catcher Andrew Bushey and closer Matt Laird. All-American catcher Paul O'Toole was forced to only play third base due to a left hand injury, forcing senior Matt Bok to take over the catching duties.
"I thought Matt Bok stepped in and just did a magnificent job catching on Sunday, despite having not been back there in quite sometime," said Maineri.
The pitching performances of freshman Chris Niesel and Grant Johnson also encouraged the Irish during this past weekend. As a starter on Sunday against Southern Illinois, Niesel went five innings, striking out 10 and allowing just one run on five hits.
The 10 strikeouts are the second-most ever by a freshman pitcher at Notre Dame and the most in an Irish pitcher's first career start. Johnson recorded his first collegiate victory by pitching six strong relief innings in the team's opening game against Missouri.
"Clearly, our freshman are going to continue to pitch because they are some of our best pitchers," said Maineri. "The performances by Grant Johnson and Chris Niesel this past weekend were really fantastic and I think they showed everybody what they're capable of doing. They're actually both going to start a game this weekend."
While Notre Dame awaits the return of their injured players, they will try and find a way to pick up some early season wins. Maineri believes they can do this by staying upbeat and positive.
"It might take a little bit of time before we have the whole squad together, but, in the mean time, we're just going to have to do it the hard way and keep battling as hard as we can and keep a positive attitude and hopefully we'll have some success until we get everybody back," said Maineri.
All Sports Stories for Friday, March 1, 2002
