ORU Bats Heating Up at the Right Time

Originally Published: May 6, 2010 3:4 PM CDT

Bobby Lewis
Oklahoma Sports Mobile Journalist

TULSA, Oklahoma – There’s hot. There’s red-hot, and then there’s the kind of hot Oral Roberts has been at the plate lately.

“I think we’ve come around ever since we’ve hit conference,” said senior designated hitter Seth Fermanek. “We started gaining some confidence and started to hit the ball pretty well.”

Apologies to Seth, but there may have never been a more understated fact. In their previous nine games heading into this weekend’s road series with South Dakota State, the Golden Eagles are smoking at the plate.

ORU has outscored its opponents 124-47 over its past nine games. They’ve scored less than nine runs just once in that stretch and blasted IPFW 34-10 last Friday. Lately, the batter’s box has been more of a launching pad for the Golden Eagles’ hitters.

“When guys get hot, they stay hot,” said ORU head coach Rob Walton. “Here of late, obviously they’ve swung the bats to their potential. Hopefully that’s something we can build off of.”

Before the season started, Walton said he expected his offense to carry the team early on until the team’s young pitching staff got its feet wet in college competition. Things didn’t quite work out that way, as Oral Roberts struggled to a 5-10 start, scoring five or more runs just seven times over that stretch.

“We probably didn’t play a clean game until our 20th or 25th game of the year,” said Walton. “It’s nice to see that we’ve put some back-to-back games together.”

Since the meat of league play began in late-March, the Golden Eagles have peppered the baseball all over the field, home and away. ORU is batting nearly .400 over its last 20 games and has won 15 of those games.

“I feel like we’re all starting to get a feel for each other,” said senior first baseman P.J. Sequeira. “It’s just starting to click, and it’s the right time. This is the time it needs to happen.”

The blistering bats have picked up at the right time. Oral Roberts leads Centenary by just a half game with 13 to play. Their May 14-16 series in Shreveport, La., may be a league-deciding four-game set.

Luckily, ORU gets to bring their bats.

“It’s very important to catch fire this time of year,” said Fermanek. “I don’t mind getting off to a slow start as long as we catch fire at the end.”

Fire may be the only thing hotter than ORU right now.