Fratto: The University of South Florida Bulls — Trying To Take Advantage Of Opportunity In Big East Tournament

PRISM Press Group was for­tu­nate enough to have recently come into con­tact with Mike Fratto, a free­lance reporter that for the last two years spent time cov­er­ing Navy foot­ball and women’s bas­ket­ball for The Wash­ing­ton Times, and this week is ben­e­fit­ing from his pres­ence at the 2010 Big East tour­na­ment for men’s basketball.

The fol­low­ing is Fratto’s inau­gural piece for PRISM Press Group and cov­ers today’s first round match up between the Uni­ver­sity of South Florida and DePaul University.

All mate­ri­als included in this piece remain the sole prop­erty of Michael and PRISM Press Group and may not be repro­duced with­out the per­mis­sion of Mike, obtain­able by email­ing mikefratto@qmail.com.

The sce­nario for South Florida was clear enter­ing the Big East tour­na­ment. By beat­ing Con­necti­cut in their regular-season finale, the Bulls got them­selves back in the bub­ble dis­cus­sion. But they still had plenty work to do this week at Madi­son Square Garden.

So while the Bulls were get­ting ready to head north, senior guard Chris Howard approached Stan Heath with a sim­ple message.

“He told me, ‘Coach, make sure you bring five suits.’ And I did,” Heath said. “We can’t leave things to chance. We had some other oppor­tu­ni­ties we let slip through our fin­gers this sea­son. The best thing you can do is win and con­trol your own destiny.”

The Bulls got one step closer Tues­day with a 58–49 dis­patch­ing of DePaul in the first round of the Big East tournament.

They jumped out to an early 8–2 lead and never really looked back. The lead bal­looned to as much as 17 points in the first half, and at one point, first team All-Big East guard Dominique Jones was outscor­ing the Blue Demons by himself.

But the foun­da­tion of the Bulls’ lead was built on the defen­sive end. They held DePaul’s top two scor­ers — Will Walker and Mac Koshwal — to a com­bined 11-for-32 from the floor. And as a team, the Blue Demons shot a mea­ger 29.9 per­cent for the game.

“Every­body just wanted to get our first win at Madi­son Square Gar­den and start the Big East tour­na­ment well,” Jones said. “We know that Koshwal and Walker were really good play­ers so we had to buckle down on them, double-team them and stay dis­ci­plined on defense.”

Jones led the Bulls with 20 points, with most of his work com­ing early on. DePaul played more zone in the sec­ond half and dou­ble teamed Jones to try to limit his oppor­tu­ni­ties. He only took five shots in the sec­ond half, but had more than enough help from his teammates.

Thanks to their 15-point half­time lead, the Bulls were able to sus­tain a pair of DePaul runs in the sec­ond half and even­tu­ally pull away with the com­fort­able victory.

“I thought we brought a lot of energy the first 20 min­utes,” Heath said. “The advan­tage for us now is we have time to go back to the hotel, relax a lit­tle bit and pre­pare for our next oppo­nent. We’ll get a good night’s rest and I like that.”

But await­ing the Bulls tomor­row is George­town, which will surely pro­vide much more resis­tance than the sixteenth-seeded Blue Demons did. South Florida didn’t make a three-pointer while dis­patch­ing DePaul, and the dom­i­nance the Bulls enjoyed in the paint, where they scored 50 of their 58 points, won’t be so eas­ily achieved with George­town star cen­ter Greg Mon­roe around.

But nonethe­less, the Bulls’ spir­its are buoyed by the mem­ory of the teams’ only other meet­ing this sea­son, when they upset the Hoyas 72–64 at Ver­i­zon Cen­ter in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

Jones led the way with 29 points that night, ignit­ing a second-half surge in which the Bulls erased an 11-point half­time deficit and outscored the Hoyas by 17 in the game’s final 20 minutes.

“I think the team feeds off what I do,” Jones said. “I think when I turned it up [in the sec­ond half against George­town], every­body turned it up. Coach’s mes­sage to us was that we need to play with high energy. We need to get steals, deflec­tions we need to get out in tran­si­tion — and that’s some­thing we’re going to try and do tomor­row for sure.”

But it’s no stretch to fig­ure George­town is going to do every­thing it can to keep Jones from burn­ing them again. He’ll have to deal with occa­sional dou­ble teams and find a way to be a facil­i­ta­tor, impact­ing the game in other ways than scoring.

This is when the real test begins for the Bulls. But even though they are rely­ing on a deep run this week for a chance at mak­ing the NCAA tour­na­ment, Heath said his team isn’t stress­ing. Instead, they are enjoy­ing the moment.

After all, this is only their sec­ond appear­ance in the Big East tour­na­ment and today was their first tour­na­ment win. What do they have to lose?

“We’ve never been here before, so in a lot of ways we’ve accom­plished things we’ve never accom­plished. I don’t think there’s a lot of pres­sure on us,” Heath said. “It’s just doing some things we really want to do. We all want to go to the NCAA tour­na­ment, so we just need to go out and play at a high level.”

  • Share/Bookmark

Donten: 2010 Snowbird Invitational — Juniata College Eagles and John Carroll Blue Streaks (Baseball)

Clear skies over South Florida led to a great day for base­ball Sun­day as the Juni­ata Col­lege Eagles took on the John Car­roll Blue Streaks in a dou­ble header as part of the 2010 Snow­bird Clas­sic at South Regional Park in Punta Gorda, Florida.

Both clubs split the dou­ble header, with Juni­ata win­ning Game One, 8–1, and John Car­roll tak­ing Game Two, 4–1.

Game One saw Juni­ata Col­lege take a com­mand­ing lead early and never look back, strik­ing gold with all eight of its runs before John Car­roll scored a lone run in the sev­enth inning.

Thanks to great pitch­ing and defense, the game remained a score­less tie until the fifth inning.  At that point, Juni­ata earned three runs aided by two errors by John Carroll.

Evan Pap­pas got things started in the fifth with a one out sin­gle,  then advanced to sec­ond on a stolen base.  Pap­pas later scored on an RBI sin­gle by Kyle Sax­man for the first run of the game.  Andrew Kriss then drove home two runs on a line drive triple to right giv­ing the Eagles a 3–0 lead.

Juanita car­ried that momen­tum into the sixth, col­lect­ing five more runs in the inning.  Johnny Mar­tinez led off the inning with a dou­ble to left field.  Gregg Hoff­man fol­lowed with a sin­gle over sec­ond base into shal­low cen­ter to put run­ners on the cor­ners with no outs.  Rus­sell Gray drove in the first run with a force out that scored Mar­tinez.  Later, Sax­man hit in two more runs with a dou­ble to left,  and this before the Eagles picked up two more runs to end the inning and increase its lead to 8–0.

John Car­roll picked up its only run in the bot­tom of the sev­enth inning when  Aaron Miller hit one down the third base line that scored Tim O’Brien.  Juanita ral­lied to end the inning, how­ever, and take the 8–1 win in the first game.

Juni­ata pitcher Tyler Clif­ford looked strong in the win, strik­ing out eight bat­ters and allow­ing only two hits in six innings of work.

Game Two began shortly after the first and ended with an oppo­site result, this as John Car­roll came away with a 4–1 win.

The Blue Streaks took con­trol of the game in the top of the third as Ryan Kon­sler led off the inning with a triple down the line into left field. Kon­sler then scored one bat­ter on an error to give the Blue Streaks a 1–0 lead.

Juni­ata scored its lone run in the bot­tom of the fourth inning to tie the game.  Hoff­man deliv­ered a dou­ble down the line to put a run­ner on base, but did not stay there long as he was dri­ven home on an RBI sin­gle by Cole Walters.

The Blue Streaks took back the lead an inning later, how­ever, with Kon­sler lead­ing the charge again, this time with a dou­ble to left field.  Mike Carbo and John Hast­ings then drew walks to load the bases.  Tim O’Brien reached on an error, scor­ing Kon­sler and leav­ing the bases loaded.  John Skomra fol­lowed by draw­ing a bases-loaded walk to push across Carbo and increase John Carrol’s lead to 3–1.

John Car­roll added an insur­ance run in the top of the sixth inning as Zach Moss scored on a wild pitch to give the Blue Streaks the 4–1 mar­gin of victory.

The Snow­bird Clas­sic con­tin­ues through the end of March, with  Juni­ata fac­ing Hei­del­berg Uni­ver­sity on Sunday.

Saturday’s game, mean­while, was John Carroll’s final game of the clas­sic, with the team now head­ing to Wash­ing­ton, Penn­syl­va­nia for the Wash­ing­ton and Jef­fer­son Invitational.

What fol­lows is a col­lec­tion of images cap­tured by James Don­ten of PRISM Press Group dur­ing Saturday’s double-header between Juanita and John Car­roll.  As always, all mate­ri­als in this post remain the sole pos­ses­sion of James and PRISM Press Group and may not be repro­duced with­out per­mis­sion, obtain­able by email­ing james@prismpressgroup.org.  Click each sin­gle image to enlarge or choose “View with Pic Lens” to begin slide show. More >

  • Share/Bookmark

Roberts: 2010 Under Armour Invitational — Quinnipiac University Bobcats and University of South Florida Bulls (Women’s Softball)

After a tough 4–2 loss in the first of two games played by the Uni­ver­sity of South Florida Bulls’ women’s soft­ball team Sun­day on the final day of the 2010 Under Armour Invi­ta­tional, USF was able to bounce back with a 1–0 win over the Quin­nip­iac Bob­cats to close out its involve­ment in this year’s tour­na­ment.  Not much offense was seen from either team in the con­test, with the lone score in the game com­ing in the top of the third inning when third base­man Ali­son Savarese struck a dou­ble into left cen­ter which allowed short­stop Tara Toscano to reach home plate.  Instead, onlook­ers were treated to a defen­sive bat­tle headed up by the pitch­ing of USF starter Brit­tney Bowles (5.2 innings, three hits, six strike­outs) and Quinnipiac’s Heather Schwartzburg (seven innings, three hits, one run, seven strike­outs), with Kris­ten Gor­don sent in at the bot­tom of the sixth to relieve Bowles for the Bulls.  Savarese once again proved a crit­i­cal role in USF’s play against a tena­cious oppo­nent, with the senior going one-for-three at home plate and an RBI ver­sus the Bob­cats, and this after grab­bing an RBI in the ear­lier extra inning loss to Penn State.  The Uni­ver­sity of South Florida improved to 2–2 with the vic­tory over Quin­nip­iac and moved to .500 on the year at 7–7.  QU, mean­while, fin­ished the Invi­ta­tional  win­less at 0–5  and  fell to 3–8 for the season.

What fol­lows is a col­lec­tion of images cap­tured by Jason Roberts of PRISM Press Group dur­ing Sun­day afternoon’s match up between QU and USF.  As always, all mate­ri­als in this post remain the sole prop­erty of Jason and PRISM Press Group and may not be repro­duced with­out per­mis­sion, obtain­able by writ­ing jason@prismpressgroup.org.  Click each sin­gle image to enlarge or chose “View with Pic Lens” to begin slide show. More >

  • Share/Bookmark

Roberts: 2010 Under Armour Invitational — Penn State University Nittany Lions and University of South Florida Bulls (Women’s Softball)

The Uni­ver­sity of South Florida Bulls soft­ball team lost a heart­breaker to the Penn State Nit­tany Lions in its first game of the third day of the 2010 Under Armour Soft­ball Invi­ta­tional in Clear­wa­ter, Florida Sun­day after­noon, falling 4–2 to Penn State after nine straight innings with the two teams tied at 1–1.  The Bulls struck first in the bot­tom of the sixth, with right fielder Gina Kafalas reach­ing home plate off the 19th RBI of the sea­son for third base­man Ali­son Savarese.  Mean­while, a com­bi­na­tion of starter in the cir­cle Kris­ten Gor­don and reliever Lind­sey Richard­son held the Nit­tany Lions at bay until the top of the sev­enth, when Richard­son yielded a dou­ble by third base­man Lau­ren Rossi that allowed  right fielder Mary Ost­man to score and put PSU back in the game.  Jackie Hill remained the pitcher for Penn State through­out all ten innings of Sunday’s match up, fin­ish­ing the day giv­ing up four hits, two runs, two walks and strik­ing out 11 Bulls’ bat­ters.  She would allow two runs in the bot­tom of the tenth, this after Penn State earned three runs of its own off USF closer Capri Cata­lano in the top of the inning, but fin­ished out the win for the Nit­tany Lions after short­stop Tara Toscano grounded out to sec­ond in the Bulls last at-bat.  Cata­lano earned her first loss of the 2010 sea­son as a result of Penn State’s vic­tory, with the Uni­ver­sity of South Florida falling to 1–2 for the Under Armour Invi­ta­tional.  Penn State, mean­while, improved to 3–2 for the tour­na­ment, and, in doing so, ended a 21 inning score­less drought that extended back to Friday’s game against Florida Gulf Coast University.

What fol­lows is a col­lec­tion of images taken by Jason Roberts of PRISM Press Group high­light­ing the action from Sun­day afternoon’s match up between PSU and USF.  As usual, all mate­ri­als in this post remain the sole prop­erty of Jason and PRISM Press Group and may not be repro­duced with­out per­mis­sion, obtain­able by email­ing jason@prismpressgroup.org.  Click on each sin­gle image to enlarge or select “View with Pic Lens” to begin slide show. More >

  • Share/Bookmark

Roberts: University of Connecticut Huskies and University of South Florida Bulls (Men’s Basketball)

A rau­cous crowd filled the USF Sun Dome Sat­ur­day after­noon as the Uni­ver­sity of South Florida Bulls men’s bas­ket­ball team cel­e­brated Senior Day by win­ning its final home game of the 2009–2010 sea­son against the Con­necti­cut Huskies, 75–68 — the first time since join­ing the Big East that the Bulls have man­aged to defeat the Huskies.  USF main­tained an uptempo pace through­out much of the con­test, with four play­ers — includ­ing Dominique Jones, who fin­ished with 20 points — break­ing the double-digit scor­ing mark on the day. Tak­ing advan­tage of near 51 per­cent shoot­ing from the floor against the Huskies, the Uni­ver­sity of South Florida took as much as a five point lead in a tightly con­tested first half of play, then open the sec­ond with a 12–1 run to break ahead by a score of 45–32 with just over 16 min­utes to play.    That lead would increase to as much as 14 shortly there­after, yet UConn refused to panic,  col­lect­ing itself and ral­ly­ing from behind to close the gap to just two points with 36 sec­onds remain­ing after Alex Ori­akhi dunked off an offen­sive rebound.  The Bulls too much to over­come, how­ever, with USF hit­ting seven-of-eight free throws in the last 1:04 to play, includ­ing two by Chris Howard that put his team up for good   In earn­ing the vic­tory, the Bulls secured the No. 9 seed in the Big East Tour­na­ment, where it will kick things off next Tues­day against DePaul.

What fol­lows is a col­lec­tion of images cap­tured by Jason Roberts of PRISM Press Group high­light­ing the action from the match up between UConn and USF.  As always, all mate­ri­als in this post remain the sole prop­erty of Jason and PRISM Press Group and may not be repro­duced with­out per­mis­sion, obtain­able by email­ing jason@prismpressgroup.org.  Click each sin­gle image to enlarge or choose “View with Pic Lens” to start slide show. More >

  • Share/Bookmark

Roberts: 2010 Under Armour Invitational — Penn State University Nittany Lions and Florida International University Panthers (Women’s Softball)

Jason Roberts of PRISM Press Group was at the Eddie C. Moore Soft­ball Com­pex in Clear­wa­ter, Florida Sat­ur­day tak­ing in the sights and sounds of the 2010 Under Armour Soft­ball Invi­ta­tional, and, in the one of many games cov­ered dur­ing the late morn­ing / early after­noon, looked on in the game between the Penn State Uni­ver­sity Nit­tany Lions and Florida Inter­na­tional Pan­thers.  FIU was dom­i­nat­ing in the match up and played much like a team boast­ing of a 13–3 record head­ing into the con­test with the Nit­tany Lions, espe­cially thanks to the out­stand­ing throw­ing of Pan­thers’ starter in the cir­cle, Kas Bar­rett.   Bar­rett went a full game ver­sus PSU, and allowed just two hits by Penn State bat­ters while strik­ing out a remark­able 11 bat­ters in 27 faced.  Nit­tany Lions pitcher Lisa Akamine too would go seven innings, but posted no where near the num­bers of Bar­rett, fin­ish­ing with seven hits and five runs while strik­ing out just two.  Pan­thers short­stop Kayla Burri led all FIU hit­ters in the win, earn­ing two runs in three at bats, while third base­man Jes Alfonso, sec­ond base­man Brie Rojas and left fielder Beth Peller all posted one run a piece.   FIU moves to 2–1 for the Under Armour Invi­ta­tional as a result of the 5–0 vic­tory, while Penn State, hav­ing swept Cen­tral Michi­gan and Florida Gulf Coast Uni­ver­sity Fri­day and lost to Ball State ear­lier in the day, dropped to an equal 2–1 mark for the tour­na­ment,  11–6 for the season.

What fol­lows is a col­lec­tion of images taken by Jason Roberts of PRISM Press Group high­light­ing the action between RU and BSU.  As always, all pho­tos remain the sole prop­erty of Jason and PRISM Press Group and may not be repro­duced with­out explicit per­mis­sion, obtain­able by email­ing jason@prismpressgroup.org.  Click each sin­gle image to enlarge or choose “View with Pic Lens” to begin slide show. More >

  • Share/Bookmark

Roberts: 2010 Under Armour Invitational — Rutgers University Scarlet Knights and Ball State University Cardinals (Women’s Softball)

Jason Roberts of PRISM Press Group was at the Eddie C. Moore Soft­ball Com­pex in Clear­wa­ter, Florida Sat­ur­day tak­ing in the sights and sounds of the 2010 Under Armour Soft­ball Invi­ta­tional, and, in the one of many games cov­ered dur­ing the late morn­ing / early after­noon, looked on in the game between the Rut­gers Uni­ver­sity Scar­let Knights and Ball State Uni­ver­sity Car­di­nals.  Rut­gers’ start­ing pitcher Noelle Sisco threw strongly through the early parts of the match up, allow­ing just three hits in innings one through three of Saturday’s con­test.  BSU’s Kim Maz­za­pica didn’t fare nearly as well from the cir­cle to start, allow­ing two runs in the bot­tom of the first to put the Scar­let Knights up 2–0, but would play solid for the next five innings and not allow an addi­tional run.   After strug­gling ini­tially at the plate, the Car­di­nals were finally able to shake off the pitch­ing of Sisco in the fourth, open­ing things up offen­sively against both the sopho­more and relief pitcher Holly John­son (four innings pitched, three hits, three runs and two strike outs) by post­ing an impres­sive total of seven runs on six hits and an error by Rut­gers left fielder Mcken­zie Alden.  That would be all the scor­ing Ball State needed to pull ahead and stay ahead of the Scar­let Knights for the remain­der of the game, though Rut­gers would threaten in the bot­tom of the sev­enth after out­fielder Mike­lyn Messina sent a three-run homer over the wall with two outs.  With the final score 7–5, Ball State moved to 2–0 on the day and 3–1 for the Under Armour Soft­ball Invi­ta­tional.  Rut­gers, mean­while, dropped to 2–1 for the tour­na­ment, with Sisco awarded her sec­ond loss on the year.

What fol­lows is a col­lec­tion of images taken by Jason Roberts of PRISM Press Group high­light­ing the action between RU and BSU.  As always, all pho­tos remain the sole prop­erty of Jason and PRISM Press Group and may not be repro­duced with­out explicit per­mis­sion, obtain­able by email­ing jason@prismpressgroup.org.  Click each sin­gle image to enlarge or choose “View with Pic Lens” to begin slide show. More >

  • Share/Bookmark

Roberts: 2010 Under Armour Invitational — Boston University Terriers and Robert Morris University Colonials (Women’s Softball)

Jason Roberts of PRISM Press Group was at the Eddie C. Moore Soft­ball Com­pex in Clear­wa­ter, Florida Sat­ur­day tak­ing in the sights and sounds of the 2010 Under Armour Soft­ball Invi­ta­tional, and, in the one of many games cov­ered dur­ing the late morn­ing / early after­noon, cap­tured the game between the Boston Uni­ver­sity Ter­ri­ers and Robert Mor­ris Uni­ver­sity Colo­nials.   The score teetered back and forth for much of the con­test between the two schools, with Boston tak­ing an early three run lead in the bot­tom of the first inning off the hit­ting of short­stop Rachel Her­bert, third base­man Caitlin Rentler and left fielder Rachel Moeller, then Robert Mor­ris fir­ing back in the top of the third to tie the score at 3–3, with out­fielder Kat­rina Gal­lagher, short­stop Jes­sica Calderone and out­fielder Jaci Timko all reach­ing home plate.  The Ter­ri­ers would answer the Colo­nials rally in the top of the third inning by scor­ing an addi­tional run in the bot­tom of the third on a sin­gle to cen­ter field by Boston cen­ter­fielder April Set­ter­lund that was mis­han­dled and drew one of two errors on the day for Robert Mor­ris.  Both teams man­aged to add two scores a piece wokring through the fourth inning, leav­ing the game at 6–5, but it would be the bot­tom of the sixth in which the game would be decided, with BU cat­a­pult­ing itself ahead 8–5 in no small part to catcher Jayme Mask’s sec­ond triple on the year.  With the win, Boston moved to 4–4 on the sea­son, with releiver Whit­ney Tuthill earn­ing her sec­ond vic­tory for 2010 after pitch­ing 3.2 innings and allow­ing eight hits, five runs and strik­ing out two.  Robert Mor­ris, in the mean­time, fell to a 1–3 record on the year, with Alex Bryson awarded the loss after allow­ing 10 hits and six runs in four innings in the circle.

What fol­lows in a col­lec­tion of images cap­tured by Jason Roberts of PRISM Press Group from the morn­ing match up between BU and RMC.  All pho­tos remain the sole prop­erty of Jason and PRISM Press Group and may not be repro­duced with­out explicit per­mis­sion, obtain­able by email­ing jason@prismpressgroup.org.  Click each sin­gle image to enlarge or choose “View with Pic Lens” to begin slide show. More >

  • Share/Bookmark