Marshall University Athletics
MCGILL: Spring cleaning with notes from around Marshall athletics
4/8/2019 4:26:00 PM | Baseball, Men's Basketball, Softball, Women's Basketball, Volleyball, Big Green Scholarship Foundation, Word on the Herd
Tidbits on softball, baseball, volleyball and basketball
By Chuck McGill
HerdZone.com
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. – Spring is for cleaning, so let's shake the pages of my notebook and see what we can find.
SOFTBALL, PART I
When Rachel Rousseau belted a 3-2 pitch in the bottom of the eighth inning for a walk-off home run against Western Kentucky on Sunday afternoon, she helped the Thundering Herd continue a streak. The Marshall softball team has won its first four series in Conference USA play this season.
Oddly enough, the Herd has yet to sweep a three-game C-USA series this season, but this is still a rare achievement. Marshall is 8-4 in league play after going 2-1, 2-1, 2-1 and 2-1 in the first four conference series. The Herd has only won the first four series in league play three other times in program history, and all were season in which the team won the regular season title.
Marshall opened the 2017 season by sweeping UTSA, Charlotte and WKUÂ before winning two out of three against Southern Miss. Then, the Herd swept FAU for its fifth consecutive series win. That team won the C-USA regular season championship, reached the NCAA regionals and finished the season ranked in the top 25.
The softball program also opened the season with four straight series wins in 2003 and '05. In '03, the Herd started 11-2 in Mid-American Conference play. In '05, MU started 13-3. In both seasons, Marshall won the MAC regular season title.
SOFTBALL, PART II
Sophomore first baseman Aly Harrell tied a school record this weekend after she was walked four times in one game. She continues to climb the charts nationally in free passes.
Harrell is now second nationally in walks per game at 1.05 – she has been given a free pass 40 times in 38 games. She trails only Alabama's Kaylee Tow, who has 49 walks in 42 games (1.17 per game). Harrell has 11 home runs, 40 walks and has been hit by a pitch 13 times this season.
BASEBALL
Former Marshall baseball player and state native Corey Bird has been promoted to Double-A Jacksonville. The news made me wonder about former Herd student-athletes in professional baseball.
Bird, 23, opened the season at Single-A Jupiter, but received the promotion after six at-bats. A seventh round draft pick of the Marlins, the left-handed Bird stole a base in each of his first two games with Jacksonville.
J.D. Hammer is also at the AA level. The former Herd hurler opened this season at Reading, the AA affiliate of the Philadelphia Phillies. He made his season debut with a two-inning, two-strikeout performance, allowing no runs and one hit. He threw 24 pitches, 19 of them for strikes.
Burris Warner, 24, opened this season with Lakeland, the High-A affiliate of the Detroit Tigers. Warner, a 22nd round selection by the Tigers in 2016, has tossed three innings on the young season.
This is the eighth different season Dan Straily has appeared in the majors. The 30-year-old signed with the Baltimore Orioles after two seasons with the Marlins, where he made 56 starts. Straily has a 4.28 career earned-run average in 143 appearances in the big leagues.
VOLLEYBALL
Kudos to Ari Aganus and the Marshall volleyball program. First, on Friday, Aganus organized a team function at Huntington's Kitchen, creating team-building exercise in which five teams competed in an Iron Chef-style cook off. Videos of the competition can be found on the volleyball program's various social media accounts – Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
On Saturday, the volleyball program was visible again – this time as part of the second annual #MyHuntington clean-up. The student-athletes helped pick up more than 25 bags of trash from the streets of Huntington.
Marshall has approximately 350 student-athletes who combine to volunteer around 10,000 hours of their time each year.
WOMEN'S BASKETBALL
Shayna Gore, who finished her Marshall career last month, participated in a pair of professional scouting combines last weekend.
The Logan native first showcased her skills in the Insider Exposure pro combine on Friday at the USF basketball training facility in Tampa, Florida. Gore also participated in the ProHoops combine at Tampa Prep High School on Saturday.
MEN'S BASKETBALL, PART I
The four seasons of men's basketball is in the rear view.
That's right, the Marshall fellas played hoops in the summer, fall, winter and spring in 2018-19. The journey to the CIT championship and 23-win season began July 23 with the first practice in anticipation of a trip to the Bahamas. The first game – at Eastern Kentucky on Nov. 7 – came in the fall. The season spanned the entirety of winter, and then concluded last Thursday weeks after the first day of spring.
There is one significant date left on the men's basketball calendar: Saturday's annual basketball reception, hosted by the Big Green Scholarship Foundation. If you haven't already, contact the Big Green to secure tickets, which have been selling fast. For more information, contact the Big Green: 304-696-4661 or biggreen@marshall.edu.
MEN'S BASKETBALL, PART II
Congratulations are in order after former Marshall basketball player Ot Elmore – now an assistant coach at Glenville State – who got married last weekend. Last March, Elmore became a social media sensation during March Madness. This year, on Final Four weekend, he again had Twitter buzzing.
On his wedding day, Elmore tweeted about being asked about his nerves on he and his significant other's big day.
The tweet read, in part: "I played in an NCAA tournament game, which led to me trending worldwide. Now that's attention. But marrying girl I love in front of 100 friends/family members. That's cake, I'm going to enjoy that."
Well done, Ot.
Chuck McGill is the Assistant Athletic Director for Fan/Donor Engagement and Communications at Marshall University and a seven-time winner of the National Sports Media Association West Virginia Sportswriter of the Year award. In addition to HerdZone.com's Word on the Herd, McGill is the editor of Thundering Herd Illustrated, Marshall's official athletics publication. Follow him on Twitter (@chuckmcgill) and Instagram (wordontheherd).
