The last time Arizona played at Hi Corbett Field was more than a month ago on Senior Day, May 11, when the Wildcats capped a 24-6 record at home with a victory over Utah.
The Wildcats (44-19) are on the road for a fifth straight week, now in Omaha, Neb., for the program’s 19th trip to the College World Series.
The appearance in Omaha comes after a road odyssey that included a series win at Houston, 3-0 records in the Big 12 tournament and Eugene (Ore.) Regional and a 2-1 mark in last week’s best-of-three Chapel Hill (N.C.) Super Regional against North Carolina.
Their 10-2 record in the last four weeks has contributed to being 20-13 away from Tucson this season.
Chip Hale’s team is certainly battled tested for more postseason challenges at Charles Schwab Field at Omaha for the CWS. Arizona will open with a game Friday at 11 a.m., Tucson time, against Coastal Carolina (53-11).
The Chanticleers’ amount of victories and their current 23-game winning streak lead the country.
“We have a team motto — we call it the ‘Wear Down,'” Mason White said in a press conference Thursday morning in Omaha. “We’re used to going on these long trips, connecting flights, long bus rides. We started this four-week trip, I guess you’d call it, in Houston.
“It was hot and super humid. We’ve just been grinding through that. It prepared us very well for this.”
Wear Down, Arizona
“Everybody’s on the road here,” stopper Tony Pluta said. “I think being on the road was a really big help for us, just to have a little bit of a hostile environment in some places. I think that really prepared us for what we’re going to face here.”
COASTAL CAROLINA COACH LAUDS TOP PART OF ARIZONA’S LINEUP
Coastal Carolina head coach Kevin Schnall was an assistant to Gary Gilmore when Coastal Carolina defeated Arizona in the 2016 College World Series championship series.
Schnall was asked during the press conference Thursday what stands out to him about the Wildcats this time around.
“Well, nothing stood out to me about playing Arizona outside that they’re a really good team,” said Schnall, who then discussed Arizona’s top part of the batting order of right fielder Brendan Summerhill, centerfielder Aaron Walton and White at shortstop.
“What does the Arizona team look like? The first three hitters look like they’re as good as hitters in the country,” he said. “They get on base. They slug. The shortstop has 70-plus RBIs. It’s a very dangerous lineup that is playing really well at the right time.”
White leads the Wildcats and is 24th in the nation with 72 RBIs. He is fourth in RBIs among players at the CWS behind UCLA’s Mulivai Levu (No. 2 in the nation with 85), Murray State’s Dan Tauken (No. 15, 76) and UCLA’s Roch Cholowsky (No. 21, 73).
Summerhill is batting .358 with a slugging percentage of .585, and Walton is at .320 and .595. White is at .332 and .692.
SCHNALL SAYS HIS PITCHERS HAVE “GUTS”
In the Chanticleers’ 23-game winning streak, the team’s pitching staff has posted an ERA of 3.26.
“What’s more impressive is what opponents are doing with runners in position,” Schnall said. “That talks and speaks loudly about guts. And this pitching staff has guts.”
Auburn batted .143 with runners on and only produced one hit in 15 at-bats with runners in scoring position in its Super Regional loss to Coastal Carolina.
The Chanticleers enter the CWS with the second-best team ERA in the country at 3.21 (Northeastern is No. 1 at 3.06).
Arizona is expected to face Jacob Morrison, a big right-hander who is 6-foot-8 and 245 pounds, is 11-0 with a 2.15 ERA and 0.93 WHIP (walks and hits per innings pitched) in 96 1/3 innings.
Riley Eikhoff, who has a 2.90 ERA in 15 starts, and Cameron Flukey, 3.24 ERA in 91 2/3 innings, are the other starters in the rotation.
HALE AND HIS PLAYERS: ARIZONA HAS “GRITTINESS” AND WELCOMES THE “GRIND” OF THE POSTSEASON
Hale, White and Pluta often stated that the Wildcats have shown “grittiness” and the ability to handle the “grind” that comes with a deep postseason run.
“We grind out every pitch,” White said when asked by the Arizona Daily Star’s Michael Lev what is the team’s distinguishable trait. “It’s been a long season. There’s been a lot of long stretches of good and bad.
“But this team really adopts that pitch-by-pitch mentality that’s been shoved in our face all year by the coaching staff because they know that’s how you win baseball games. Guys who didn’t buy into it, they have bought into it now. And that’s how we’ve gotten ourselves to this point.”
Pluta on the same topic: “This team is really gritty. It doesn’t matter what gets thrown at us. Even if we get knocked down, we’ll get back up. We’re ready for anything that comes our way.”
The late Jerry Kindall called Hale a “gamer” — someone who plays with the utmost intensity and resolve — during his Wildcat career, which included a 1986 CWS championship at Rosenblatt Stadium in Omaha.
It is fitting that Arizona as a team has taken on Hale’s characteristic when he was a Wildcat.
“Clutch hitting, grittiness and, again, the pitching, keeping it close,” Hale said about what Arizona needs to exhibit in Omaha to be a success. “Obviously, you saw what happened Friday in Chapel Hill (in the 18-2 loss). It didn’t matter how gritty we were when they were hitting the ball over the ballpark.
“We need good pitching every night to stay in the game and stay close.”
ARIZONA TO SEE FAMILIAR FIELD DIMENSIONS AT SCHWAB FIELD
Arizona has 76 home runs as a team, 28 of them (37 percent) in the last 12 games on the road after leaving spacious Hi Corbett.
The Wildcats hit at least one home run in 11 of the 12 games. They achieved a program-record eight in the 14-4 win over Utah Valley in the Eugene Regional and followed that performance with six more in the regional championship over Cal Poly (14-0 win). The loss at North Carolina was their only game without a home run during the last 12 games.
“Our park is very large and the wind blows straight in, so our numbers don’t show how well this team can hit the ball out of the park,” said White, who has 19 home runs this season and is second on the Arizona career list with 48.
“When we get into an offensive environment like Oregon, it just exploded. That’s what this team is capable of in a park like that.”
They will now play in a park that has somewhat similar dimensions as Hi Corbett.
Schwab Field is 335 feet at the left and right field lines, 375 in left-center and right-center, and 408 in center field.
Hi Corbett is 366 feet in left field, 349 in right field, 410 to left-center, 405 feet to right-center, and 392 feet in center.
“It feels very familiar,” White said when asked about his impression of Schwab Field. “You can’t hit the ball up in the air. You can’t hit lazy foul balls, exactly like Chip yells at us all the time: ‘Get the ball out of the air.’ He screams, ‘Low and hard.’ That’s how we played at home.
“Aaron Walton would hit a ball 110 miles an hour in the gap and get caught. And then someone would hit a hard ground ball, get a guy over maybe for a hit and score a run, and he’ll be screaming, ‘See, that’s all you have to do.’ I think that’s going to play for us being here. And hopefully we feel more at home with that.”
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ALLSPORTSTUCSON.com publisher, writer and editor Javier Morales is a former Arizona Press Club award winner. He is a former Arizona Daily Star beat reporter for the Arizona basketball team, including when the Wildcats won the 1996-97 NCAA title. He has also written articles for CollegeAD.com, Bleacher Report, Lindy’s Sports, TucsonCitizen.com, The Arizona Republic, Sporting News and Baseball America, among many other publications. He has also authored the book “The Highest Form of Living”, which is available at Amazon. He became an educator in 2016 and is presently a special education teacher at Sunnyside High School in the Sunnyside Unified School District.
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