A week ago, the No. 13 Arizona baseball team looked like a unit that knew how to play solid, well-rounded baseball and was leading one of the toughest conferences in the nation in convincing fashion.
Now, after three straight losses, the Wildcats have to come back to reality and need to figure out what needs to be done before the season runs away without them.
While it’s slightly cliché, Arizona head coach Andy Lopez says there’s only one thing that his squad can do — play good baseball.
“I don’t ever talk about anything except playing good baseball,“ Lopez said. “We’re gonna talk about it today, we’ll discuss what has happened in the last three games. We just haven’t played good baseball.”
Over the past weekend, Arizona lost its first conference series of the season and followed that up by blowing a 7-2 lead against ASU on Tuesday.
It’s simply a matter of both sides, offensive and defensive, working together, especially as the long season reaches its dog days.
“It’s the middle part of the season,” right fielder Robert Refsnyder said. “There’s a little bit of a lull, energies are down. We’ve got to fix that.”
Refsnyder says that the team needs to realize that it’s go time.
“We just need a sense of urgency,” he said. “We have to address that to the younger guys, and even with us older guys.”
Refsnyder said he was never in first place in the Pacific 10 Conference throughout his first two years, and while it’s a nice feeling now, it’s never guaranteed to last.
One of the biggest reasons that UA athletic director Greg Byrne and his staff made the decision to move the baseball team to Hi Corbett Field was so that they could eventually host a regional playoff, something that Arizona hasn’t done since 1992.
They have the facility now, but the regional will only come to Tucson if the Wildcats can continue to perform on the field in conference play.
“Every game in the Pac-12 is so crucial,” Refsnyder said. “I really think we need finish first or second in the conference to make Byrne’s vision of hosting a regional come to fruition.”
While the Pac-12 games are crucial, the one thing that also helps is winning the mid-week non-conference games, which has seemed like an impossible task for Arizona so far this season after losing against ASU on Tuesday as well as New Mexico State and Utah Valley last month.
“Anytime you lose it’s tough,” Refsnyder said. “But anytime you lose against midweek, you know, supposedly weaker opponents, it makes it even tougher.”
Despite the previous three contests, the Wildcats are still tied atop the Pac-12 table, but at this point, the conference crown is really anyone’s to win.
The Wildcats have a chance at redemption this weekend against Washington, but it’s certainly not going to be any easy task.
“We’ve worked hard and definitely have the talent to be where we need to be,” Refsnyder said. “So it’s definitely frustrating when we slip up, we just have to work at it.”
