Campbell Looking Comfortable In OIA Standings, For Now

Wednesday - April 22, 2009
By Jack Danilewicz
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Campbell High junior Joshua Williams practices the art of the bunt. Photo by Byron Lee, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Time will tell if having a bye the last week of the baseball season is a positive or a negative, but Campbell coach Rory Pico and his Sabers couldn’t help but like their position last week as the OIA’s regular season wrapped.

With an 8-4 record already in the books, they were able to take Monday off, and the coaching staff had time to scout potential opponents further with no immediate games. The rest of the league, meanwhile, was left to battle for position over the weekend with Saturday doubleheaders.

“There are pros and cons,” Pico said of what will amount to a 10- to 11-day layoff between games.“We’ll have no control over the standings, so we have to wait and see.

“The positive is that we’ve been able to sit back, rest and watch some games. Some of the other teams may have to use two of their best pitchers in their final games, and that could give us an advantage.We still practiced as if we had a game on Saturday.We haven’t changed anything. The kids know what to do now. It’s a matter of doing it consistently.”

Pitching is always the main subject at playoff time, and that’s especially true for the Sabers, who have ridden the arms of starters Keanu Kapana,Allyn Oliva-Respicio and Charles Kaalekahi.


 

“A combination of things (go into winning the OIA Tournament), but being deep in your pitching helps,“admitted Pico, whose team takes a four-game win streak into the post-season.“You could play three or four days in a row, so you need at least three or four guys. Pitching-wise, we’ll be able to compete if we throw the way we have all year.”

They were hoping to secure the West’s No. 2 seed, which would had given them a first-round bye on Tuesday. Under such a scenario, Campbell would host a game Wednesday versus either the third-seeded team out of the East or the sixth-seeded team out of the West. That would also mean the Sabers would find themselves only one win from clinching a berth in the state baseball tournament, not to mention allowing them to save one more pitcher in the OIA Tournament.

Who Pico decides to send to the mound first will depend on the opponent and what his staff finds from its scouting.

Experience on the mound aside, it’s still a relatively young team that might be considered by some to be a year ahead of schedule.

“This was a new group to coach for us. There were a lot of kids we had to teach a lot of new things,but it’s been fun seeing them develop.”

First priority this week is for them to get out of their own way, as self-inflicted wounds have disrupted their momentum at times.

“You can still tell we’re inexperienced. We make mistakes - the things you see from a young team. It’s a different atmosphere in the playoffs, so we’re not sure how our young guys will handle it.”


Pico sees the play of his infield as “a key for us.”

“We’ve shown a lot of different looks with our infield because we had some guys missing on school-related trips and various other things. We’ve been shuffling guys in and out, so it won’t be the same infield (as in the last four games). But if we can be solid there, we should be OK. We have to make the routine plays.”

Offensively, they are still waiting for a break-out game, although they’ve been able to come up big in key situations.

“We won our last four games basically on pitching and timely hitting,“Pico said. “We haven’t hit as well as we can yet, but we’ve scored enough to get by.”

The OIA tournament runs Tuesday through Friday at various sites with the top five finishers moving on to the state tournament.

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