Downtime No Vacation For Marauders
By Jack Danilewicz
E-mail this story | Print this page | Comments (0) | Archive | RSS | Share
Del.icio.usThe Waipahu baseball team’s current layoff of more than two weeks between games could be a good thing or not. To borrow an old coaching adage,“It’s all in how you respond.”
The situation is certainly intriguing. Winners of their first eight OIA White Conference games, they enter next week’s playoffs on a two-game losing streak after closing out the season with losses to Radford.
In most years, coach Milton Takenaka admits he likes a quick turnaround between the regular and post-season tournament.
“I’d rather that we play, but for us, it might be a good break,” said Takenaka, who is seeking a third straight Division II. “We need to work on some defensive things - bunt ‘defense,’ and situational stuff - that come up in a game, which we haven’t handled well lately.”
Defensive miscues directly affected the Radford series, and Takenaka noted that there is no room for self-imposed miscues now. The OIA Tournament is a win-orgo-home prospect - at least in their first round game.
“It’s more real in the playoffs,” he said. “You can’t make mistakes now. You like to win in the regular season, but if you lose, it won’t kill you. Come playoffs, a mistake really, really hurts.
“There are things we need to execute better, which we’ll go over with through repetition,” he said. “We’ll tweak a few things, but it’s a matter of getting back into the groove.”
Pitching has been a strength for the Marauders, with Drake Yoshioka and Jarinn Abreu providing most of the starts to date. One will pitch in the first-round game, with the other set to pitch most likely against Kaimuki in a second-round game, should the team make it that far.
“It will depend on who we play,“Takenaka said.“Pitching has been pretty decent - good enough to win games, but we haven’t helped them out at times, and we haven’t always gotten timely hitting.”
Next week’s tournament also looms large in that the top four finishers will earn the league’s berths to the DII state baseball tournament May 5-8. Whether or not Waipahu’s upperclassmen can take advantage of their playoff experience from the last two years remains to be seen.
“I hope it does,” said Takenaka. “When you’re the two-time defending champs, you have to feed that a little.”
E-mail this story | Print this page | Comments (0) | Archive | RSS
Most Recent Comment(s):
