BALTIMORE, Maryland April 17, 2015 - It seems incredible, but Maryland's baseball team was only three measley outs away from its first three game losing streak of the season. This is the same school baseball team that went from 1971 to 2014 without qualifying for the NCAA Baseball Tournament. This is the same team that went from the year that the ACC decided that only the top eight teams in the conference regular season standings could play in the conference tournament - 2007 - until its last year in the conference, 2014, without being allowed to even play in the conference tournament. In other words, Maryland was not a good baseball team. In many of those countless seasons, they weren't even a fair baseball team. That all changed when Maryland hired John Szefc to be its baseball coach. Call that move a quiet act of genius. In Szefc's first campaign nothing spectacular happened. No NCAA or even ACC Tournament. But there were some new faces from some unusual places - the Bronx, New jersey - and a new life seemed to dominate the team. In 2014, Maryland's last season in the ACC, the team seem determined to at least qualify for the conference tournament. It was a struggle. But as April ended the Terps launched into a long winning streak. They swept a road series in Pittsburgh that included winning a game that was delayed by rain and didn't start until 9 pm on a Saturday night. They beat West Virginia on the last day of the regular season. Then, in the ACC Tournament, they beat Virginia and Florida State on back to back days and ended up making it all the way to the championship game. This got them into the NCAA Tournament. They were assigned to a four-team regional at the University of South Carolina. Going into that double-elimination affair, Marylalnd's all-time NCAA Tournament record was a dismal 1-6. But this Maryland team rallied in the ninth inning to beat Old Dominion in its first game, then on consecutive nights whacked South Carolina, in front of a placked Gamecock Stadium rooting for the home team.
The Terps had - for the first time in school history - qualified for an NCAA Super Regional. They were sent to Charlottesville to play Top-Ranked Virginia in a best-of-three series, with the winner getting a berth on the College World Series. Amazing. Even more amazing was Maryland winning Game One in the series. That put them one win away from the College World Series. But the bubble burst right there and the Terps lost the final two games of the series to the eventual National Runner-Up.
Anyway, that brings us to Wednesday night at Liberty, where a pretty-good Flame Team jumped ahead of Maryland, 4-0. Starter Bobby Ruse was gone and the game was flopped into the hands of Maryland's ever-stressed and stressing bullpen. But on this night the bullpen shined bright as it could, shutting out Liberty from the fourth inning on. Maryland, meanwhile, scored single runs in three different innings, but still trailed, 4-3, with two out and nobody on in the top of the ninth. That's when Kevin Martir doubled. After Jose Cuas reached on an error, Anthony Papio singled to score Martir. Then Maryland hitters drew three straight bases-on-balls to score two more runs and earn the Terps a 6-4 victory. Maryland broke a two-game losing streak with the rally. Despite losing two our of three at home last weekend to Iowa, Maryland is still ranked by all of the polls. They are No. 22 in the D1 Poll and the USA Today Coach's Poll, No. 23 in the NCBWA Poll, No. 24 in the Baseball America Poll and No. 26 in the Collegiate Baseball Poll. This weekend Maryland takes a break from the Big Ten Wars, but their schedule instead gives them three games at home with always powerful California State University at Fullerton. The Titans have always been a college baseball powerhouse. This season isn't their absolute best - they are 19-16 overall but a solid 6-3 in the Big West Conference, the same conference that blasted the University of California at Irvington - the Anteaters - into the CWS last season. This season, despite the so-so record, the Titans have beaten Stanford and Lousiville and swept series from Baylor and Texas Tech.
Tonight's game will be televised by the Big Ten Network beginning at 7 pm. Look for Maryland's incredible Mike Shawaryn to start. He has almost single-handedly kept the Terps in the national polls with his 8-0 record and 1.89 ERA. In 62 innings over nine starts, Shawaryn has struck out 69 and walked only 11. The sophmore now has 19 wins in less than two seasons, a figure which leads all sophmores across the country.
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