By Craig Degel
Arizona Daily Wildcat
The Pacific 10 Conference Southern Division has not been kind to the Arizona baseball team.
The Wildcats are 16-25-1 overall and just 4-14 in the Six-Pac. If it were any other team, taking a break from conference play would be a relief. But that is not so against Grand Canyon University.
The Antelopes will be in Tucson tonight for a one-game meeting with the Wildcats at 7 at Frank Sancet Field.
The last time the Antelopes and Wildcats faced each other was back on March 21 in Phoenix. At the time, the Wildcats were searching for a victory to give head coach Jerry Kindall No. 832, one more than Frank Sancet.
The Wildcats held a 7-2 lead midway through the contest but the tide turned towards Grand Canyon and the Antelopes prevailed 8-7.
"We're going to try and make it a different outcome," Kindall said. "We'll start Jason Ford who came out pitching excellent ball (Sunday). If he can do a good job tonight, he then looms as one of our key pitchers at UCLA this weekend."
Ford, who pitched well against the replacement Colorado Rockies on Mar. 29, will be making his first 1995 regular season start.
Despite the question marks in the pitching staff, Kindall is confident that the offense will take care of itself.
"We have been able to put runs on the board," he said. "Now, we have to prevent the other team from doing that Ä starting with Grand Canyon."
When Kindall speaks of his staff's pitching woes, one needs only to look at the box score from Sunday's 11-6 loss to the California Golden Bears at Evans Diamond in Berkeley, Calif., to know
what he's talking about.
"We did win one of three," Kindall said. "Frankly, we could have won the whole bunch if we had the ability to close off the other team.
UA starter Kirt Kishita took a 5-0 lead into the bottom of the third, but the Bears erupted for seven runs in that inning Ä highlighted by Gavin Brown's two-run homer Ä and never looked back.
"We had some really good pitching from Zach Pringle," Kindall said. "That got us off to a terrific start, but in the second game we faltered in the late innings. In the game (Sunday) we jumped off to a 5-0 lead and once again we couldn't hold them."