Sports
 

Cougars enter C-USA stretch

UH tries to improve pitching against TCU; Horned Frogs' bats lighting it up in March

by Tom Carpenter
The Daily Cougar

The Cougars landed with a thud at the bottom of the slippery slope when Texas Tech nipped UH 12-11 Tuesday in the bottom of the ninth on a lead-off homerun, the second consecutive game that the Cougars surrendered the winning run in their opponent's final at bat.

UH played 14 non-conference games against Top 25 teams, and the young Cougars took it on the chin, going 3-11 against the basepath bullies.

Fortunately the boys of summer -- or in this case the boys of spring/summer -- have time to grab a pair of pliers and pull out the prickly pear barbs they acquired when they ran the gauntlet against the best teams in college baseball before they resume league play in earnest this week. The Cougars (8-15, 1-2 in Conference USA) host Texas Christian at 7 p.m. Friday at Cougar Field. 

Manuel Rearte/The Daily Cougar 

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UH junior shortstop Stuart Musslewhite has a .292 batting average this season, the third-highest average on the team.

The Horned Frogs (15-8, 3-0) started this season's C-USA campaign in grand fashion last weekend when they swept Memphis 3-0.

TCU will leave C-USA and join the Mountain West Conference beginning in the 2005-06 academic year. It will be TCU's fourth conference in 10 years. 

After the Southwest Conference imploded in 1995, TCU joined the Western Athletic Conference for five years and then left for C-USA.

The beleaguered Cougar pitching staff will have to find a way to shut down Missouri City native Chad Huffman. The freshman DH/first baseman leads the Horned Frog hitters with a .448 average and was named C-USA Co-Hitter of the Week this week for single-handedly demolishing Memphis. 

Tulane's Matt Barket shared the Hitter of the Week honors with Huffman.

Huffman clobbered the Tiger pitchers by smashing three homeruns, including a grand slam and an inside-the-park homer, while hitting at a torrid .615 clip. The freshman knocked in 11 runs against Memphis and had seven of TCU's eight RBIs in Sunday's 8-7 win.

The Horned Frogs ride a seven-game winning streak into Cougar Field to face a UH team struggling in a two-game slump. 

Pitching, usually a strong suit for UH, has been the Cougars' Achilles' heel in the late innings. Opposing teams have outscored the Cougars 31-11 after the seventh inning in 23 games. 

The team's earned run average mushroomed to 5.75 against baseball's elite and only one Cougar hurler, senior right-hander Matt Verner (3-2) boasts a winning record.

With 27 games against C-USA teams and six non-conference games remaining on their schedule, the Cougars have ample time to turn their season around before the NCAA playoffs arrive in June.

But if the Cougars want to be considered a legitimate threat to capture the conference championship and an NCAA berth, the boys of summer need to pick up the pace against the Horned Frogs. 

The beast of a pre-conference schedule is dead.

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