COLUMN: The Difference in Winning and Losing

2/18/2024 7:28:00 PM | Baseball, General, Men's Basketball

Merely a football field away from one another on Saturday, a pair of small things paid off in big ways for MTSU Baseball and Men’s Basketball

By: Sam Doughton, MTSU Athletic Communications

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — If you wanted to see two of the best examples of how much pressure can cook you in athletics, look no further than the campus of Middle Tennessee State University on Saturday, February 17, 2024.

With these just hours between them, and just yards from where they took place, MTSU Baseball and Men's Basketball treated Blue Raider fans to dramatic conclusions to their evenings. The type of down-to-the-wire moments that are memorable the second they happen but are equally as exhausting the moment they happen, too.

At Reese Smith Jr. Field, a frigid day with the wind blowing in from center field made it a low scoring environment, one that saw the Blue Raiders down a run with just three outs to give heading into the bottom of the ninth, Bowling Green's closer running in from the bullpen to preserve the 4-3 lead.

"We just said get it up," catcher Briggs Rutter said. "Get it up in the dugout, get the energy up and have good at-bats. Any time a baseball player is in a situation like that, you try and think 'pass the torch'. That's the mentality."

The Falcons' pitcher, Connar Penrod, clearly had the stuff to be successful at the Division I level, settling in around 90 mph with his fastball and coming into the 2024 season off a year where he kept his ERA to just 3.00 out of the bullpen. With 40 strikeouts over 30.0 IP a year ago, he was a pitcher that required discipline to figure out.

And after a leadoff flyout to left field, the Blue Raiders figured out Penrod. But maybe not in the way anyone bundled up in Murfreesboro that afternoon envisioned.

Clay Badylak, batting in the No. 9 spot. in the lineup, worked a walk. Eston Snider then reached first base on just four pitches. After ball eight to Luke Vinson, loading the bases for MTSU with just one out, Bowling Green went to the pen again.

"Some borderline pitches, we had discipline and showed a little bit of maturity at the plate with some good at-bats when we needed them," head coach Jerry Meyers said. "We made them throw strikes."

The Falcons' reliever, Peyton Wilson, at least was able to throw one strike to Gabe Jennings before he walked in the tying run. And he was able to get a full count to Rutter, who fouled off several pitches to stay alive.

"If he gives me one, I'm going to swing, because a lot of times pitchers will try to get one over in that situation," Rutter said. "I was going to do damage, I was trying to get my pitch."

But when that pitch never came, Rutter let ball four sail by, low and a little away, walking off for the series clincher after him and four other teammates showed the discipline necessary to win.

Grind out at-bats. Reap the rewards.#BLUEnited | #BlueCrew pic.twitter.com/IAHKcV7ZVJ
— Middle Tennessee Baseball (@MT_Baseball) February 18, 2024

"This is what we've been waiting to show everybody," Rutter said. "This is who this team is. I said a couple of weeks ago, we're going to scratch and claw with anybody. That's very important to us. We're focused on winning. If it's not pretty some days, that's ok."

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Hours later in the Murphy Center, while yours truly was wrapping up the stats and recap to that thriller on the diamond, men's basketball was locked in with a UTEP team that wouldn't go away. The Blue Raiders started hot, making 11-of-16 three pointers in the first half, but the Miners kept sticking around, going on second half runs of 13-0 and 6-0 to take the lead, only for MTSU to find a way to tie things back up and force overtime not once, but twice.

"It was heavyweight boxing match for a while," Head Coach Nick McDevitt said. "You had to be able land some big punches and take some as well."

Over a 50-minute game, McDevitt noted, there are dozens of plays that made the difference in getting MTSU out of the Murphy Center with a 96-90 win. A deflected pass here, a defensive rebound there, and of course, all eight of Jestin Porter's made threes on a night where the point guard scored 41 points on just 16 shots, drilling all eight of his attempts beyond the arc while going 11-for-12 at the free throw line.

The one play I'll remember the most, of the ones I was able to catch on ESPN+? It's a split-second decision from Jared Coleman-Jones on defense with the game tied, ball in UTEP's hands, after a turnover on the inbounds gave the Miners the last shot of the first overtime.

UTEP, of course, got the ball in the hands of their best guard, Tae Hardy. MTSU, likewise, put their best available on ball defender, Tre Green, on Hardy. Colemand-Jones, meanwhile, had the unenviable task of guarding the player that would screen for Hardy, Jon Dos Anjos, who finished the night 4-for-6 from three.

A dynamic guard getting screened by a stretch forward would be a tough task to guard in the first five minutes of the game, let alone late. And UTEP made it even tougher in the closing minutes, when everyone on the court was running on fumes. Hardy went left off the screen, then back right, Green going over the first time then under the second, able to cut off Hardy's drive and force a kick-back to Dos Anjos at the top of the key. Coleman-Jones was equally as quick as his teammate, though, quickly recovering out of helpside to prevent Dos Anjos from firing with just under five seconds left on the clock.

But there was still time for Hardy to receive a handoff from Dos Anjos, running back right once he saw Green shade toward the forward to prevent another kickback.

"The game is a lot of trial and error," Coleman-Jones said. "You see a lot and you've just got to, I guess, be intuitive. He came off, I was like 'it's the end of the game. I'm going to have to put my hand up.' Either he's going to pass out of that shot or he's going to take a tough shot. I'd rather him take a tough shot."

Coleman-Jones left Dos Anjos, following Hardy and jumping with the guard, his right hand making the shot extra high for the shot to have a chance. Hardy, to his credit, was close. But when the last-second shot banged off the back of the rim, MTSU lived to fight for another overtime.

It was a split-second decision Coleman-Jones had to make, he noted. But his internal clock made the choice to shade Hardy the right one.

"You're thinking in those moments sometimes, 'My man ain't going to be the reason they score and win,'" McDevitt noted. "But you've got to know the clock. He doesn't have enough time to take a bounce and pass it to a teammate."

MTSU found a way in the second overtime, making seven free throws in the game's final five minutes, supplemented by a Coleman-Jones finish at the rim and a pair of Porter threes. And Porter's heroics won't soon be forgotten by Blue Raider fans of all ages. But that 41-point mark wouldn't have happened without the decision to make Tae Hardy's last attempt as difficult as possible.

"To have that clock in your head, it's the difference in winning and losing," McDevitt said.