After having their Tuesday night game against UVU cancelled due to the weather, the Utes hit the road and travel to California to take on Stanford in a critical Pac-12 conference matchup over the weekend.
Utah (12-20) is headed back on the road after playing its last 10 games at Smith’s Ballpark, while Stanford (14-20) is coming off a mid-week loss to Santa Clara. However, the weekend before that, the Cardinal won their series 2-1 over Cal.
Head coach Bill Kinneberg believes that the matchup with Stanford’s pitchers will give his team some trouble, but that his lineup will stay the same for the most part.
“The matchup against a left-handed pitcher is a little dicey,” Kinneberg said. “We have to think about that and see if [Max] Schuman is still in the lineup or not, but other than that it’s pretty well set.”
Junior Nolan Stouder will continue to be the Friday starter after strong performances in his last two outings against Arizona State and Southeastern Louisiana. For the time being, the Utes will keep former Friday-night starter Bret Helton as a relief pitcher, and that’s the way Kinneberg prefers it.
“I kind of like what we’re doing right now,” Kinneberg said. “Stouder has been terrific on Friday nights for us. It gives us a chance to use Bret two, maybe three, times a week … I think it’s a positive for us particularly. [Helton] gets a chance to be influential in two or three games.”
Junior Dalton Carroll will take the mound on Saturday and freshman Jayson Rose will follow up with the start on Sunday.
On the opposite side of the ball, the offense has been struggling to win games, despite seeing the ball better than it did earlier in the season. Senior Biss Larsen said the offense has been picking up the slack since their series against Nicholls State at the beginning of the year.
“As a team, we were hitting .220 and from then until now, our overall batting average has gone up 40 points to .260,” Larsen said. “And so what we felt is that we did struggle offensively early, but the last five or six weeks we’ve put up runs in a respectable manner.”
Despite losing a lot of games this season, especially in the later innings, the Utes are still playing with confidence. Larsen went on to mention that it’s important for Utah to play with that confidence, as baseball is a game of failure and can easily break down some players when they don’t succeed.
First pitch is set for 7 p.m. MT from Palo Alto.
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