Sports

Sullivan heats up at right time

By Geronimo Rodriguez
The Daily Cougar

Maybe the Cougar baseball team didnit deserve the praise it received during the off-season. Maybe the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association took a gamble when it ranked UH as the sixth-best team in the nation. Maybe someone should try telling Brad Sullivan his team doesnit deserve to win another game.

But Sullivan, along with a strikeout-happy pitching staff and a lineup that has hustle written all over it, wonit rely on polls or statistics to tell them where the team belongs. Instead, the 14-15 Cougars, who have won six of their last eight games, will scrape together as many wins as possible to finish the season with the look of a team that did deserve the ranking.

If it seems impossible to go from bad to nearly perfect, just look at what Sullivan has done in recent games.

After a stellar 2002 season, Sullivan walked to the mound this season with a number of awards and honors tagged to his jersey. The shocker came when the consensus All-American fell quickly to an 0-3 start.

But Sullivan dispelled the skepticism by earning four consecutive wins, including five games with at least 10 strikeouts. The 6-1, 205-pound junior has also fanned 79 batters, limiting opponents to a .196 batting average.

While Sullivan is cruising to another season for the record books, the Cougars have flirted with surpassing the .500 mark. The team, which carries a 6-3 record in conference play, is also on the brink of breaking into the top slots of the Conference USA standings.

As far as Sullivan is concerned, everyone can forget about the Cougar mishaps earlier in the season and focus more on where the team is headed.

"The main thing is that we stayed positive and kept ourselves in a position to win games," Sullivan said. "Right now I honestly think weire right where we want to be. We just have to pick it up and get into a Regional ­ anything can happen from there."

If the Cougars want to throw together a couple of big wins, it would be ideal for the team to begin "picking it up" Friday. Sullivan is slated to start Game 1 of the three-game series against C-USA rival Alabama-Birmingham (21-6), which is blazing past conference opponents with a 6-2 record.

"Weill take it one day at a time, but one thing that I look at as a big advantage for us is that we get to play on our home field," Sullivan said. "It always feels good to step on the mound with fans behind you."

Sullivan said playing at Cougar Field allows him to forget about the distractions and hone in on the batter, study everything from the swing to the stance and hit his favorite mark: the catcheris mitt.

"I just apply everything Iive learned from Coach (Rayner) Noble, Coach (Bragg) Stockton and scouting reports to keep the batter off-balance," Sullivan said. "Coach Noble taught me how routine was important, and I built off that. Coach Stockton helped me out with improving my mechanics. The rest is just hard work."

Stockton, who was credited with helping the pitching staff reach new heights last season, died Jan. 21. Sullivan said Stockton and Noble gave him and his teammates an invaluable amount of knowledge of the game, and he hopes to return the favor.

"Itis always been a goal of mine to not just put on the uniform, but to leave a mark on the program," Sullivan said.

So will Sullivan and teammates turn around the season to contend for some national recognition?

"Letis just say Iim a firm believer in the saying ‘You get what you deserve,i" he said.

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