Jim Mashek

WESTERN KENTUCKY HAS WON 11 OF ITS LAST 13 CONFERENCE USA GAMES

Twenty minutes after it was over, after his teammates had packed their gear and gone their separate ways, Western Kentucky catcher Ricardo Leonett was sitting in the Hilltoppers’ dugout.

Alone.

Leonett had to tend to media responsibilities, of course, waiting for first-year WKU baseball coach Marc Rardin to finish his postgame interview with Randy Lee, the voice of the Hilltoppers.

Leonett had a smile on his face that radiated from Bowling Green to his native Venezuela.

“You can’t let the pressure get to you,” Leonett said after his 10th-inning RBI double to right-center field sent the Hilltoppers to a dramatic 5-4 victory over the Rice Owls on Friday night at Nick Denes Field. “I think that’s something (playing in extra innings), we’ve done a million times. Going over the approach, what to do in certain situations.

“Everybody’s working toward the same goal.”

The goal, now — believe it or not — is to compete for a berth in the NCAA Tournament.

One step at a time, of course.

Western Kentucky won in Conference USA play for the 11th time in its last 13 league games, improving to 28-22 overall. The Tops (13-12 in C-USA play) will get another shot at the tradition-rich Rice squad on Saturday evening, with a chance to clinch the three-game series on Senior Night.

Leonett is one of those seniors. So, too, is WKU second baseman Tristin Garcia, the 5-foot-4 sparkplug from Louisville’s Male High School who joined the Hilltoppers for the 2022 season after three years at Alcorn State, an HBCU university in remote Lorman, Mississippi.

Garcia has been the Tops’ leading hitter for nearly the entire season, and he’s shown considerable improvement defensively, too. The WKU arms are certainly holding up their end of the bargain, and Rardin used five pitchers to knock off the Owls in extra innings.

“We’re playing to win the series,” Rardin said, “and not just the first game.”

That’s how it works in college baseball, and soon the games will come more frequently, with considerably more at stake.

The Hilltoppers haven’t played in the NCAA Tournament since 2009, and success has come in drips and drabs rather than over the long haul. Rardin implemented a plan last year, after building a dynasty at Iowa Western Community College in Council Bluffs, Iowa. He’s told himself, time after time, that there would be bumps in the road.

These days, this team appears to be motoring straight ahead.

“This game, it was just a dogfight,” Leonett said. “A game like this gives you confidence. I think we’ve always had a special team. We’ve just got to keep working.”

The Owls are scrapping with Conference USA rivals Florida International and UAB for the final berth in the league’s eight-team postseason tournament, which will begin May 24 at Rice’s home field, Reckling Park in downtown Houston, Texas.

Western will be making just its third appearance at the Conference USA Tournament this season, on the heels of last year’s 18-36 disaster under former WKU coach John Pawlowski. It’s taken some time for th saw 1e team to establish an identity, but the Hilltoppers seem to have found one over the last month or so.

Until April 8, when the Tops got swept in a three-game series at longtime rival Middle Tennessee State, Rardin’s squad had posted a poor 5-9 record in games decided by two runs or less.

Since then, the missed opportunities have been far less frequent. Western has gone 7-3 in games decided by two runs or less, and the Hilltoppers still have five games to work with — two more against Rice, and then a regular-season ending series against league-leading Dallas Baptist University — before they remain in Texas for the Conference USA Tournament in less than two weeks.

WKU’s Marc Rardin watched his team squander a 4-0 lead on Friday night, when Rice’s starting pitcher, Parker Smith, recovered from a poor start. WKU’s Ricardo Leonett and Aidan Gilroy delivered run-scoring hits in the bottom of the second, but from there, the Tops managed just three hits until coming up with the winning formula in extra innings.

“There’s always a home team, and they always get the last three outs,” Rardin said. “When they score (in a tie game), the game is over. That is the hard thing, on the road. Even when you have a little bit of momentum, the other team always has three outs to go.”

The Hilltoppers’ winning rally started with one out in the 10th, when senior WKU second baseman Tristin Garcia lined a pitch from Rice reliever Justin Long down the left-field line for a single. Lukas Farris, the Tops’ cleanup hitter, struck out before senior catcher/outfielder Kirk Liebert coaxed a walk from Long to put the winning run in scoring position.

“All of a sudden, that changes everything,” Rardin said.

The Owls’ outfield had to take a few steps in, and Leonett had been swinging a hot bat. (He also erased a Rice base runner trying to steal second in the sixth). Long challenged him with a fastball, and Leonett ripped the pitch to deep right-center field, allowing Garcia to score easily with the winning run.

The Hilltoppers stormed onto the field to celebrate the gritty victory.

“We just had to piece it together,” Rardin said. “Ricky (Leonett) is a fastball hitter.”

WKU’s starting pitcher, junior left-hander Lane Diuguid, cruised through the first four innings before faltering in the fifth. The Owls’ Jack Riedel and Ben Royo delivered back-to-back, run-scoring doubles, trimming Western’s lead to 4-3, before Diuguid put Rice center fielder Connor Walsh on base with a walk.

That’s when Rardin and WKU pitching coach Dillon Napoleon went with reliever Evan Jones, who fired a i2-2 fastball past the Owls’ Aaron Smigelski to end the threat.

Jones encountered some trouble of his own, in the sixth, as Rice’s Drew Holderbach crushed a pitch for a solo home run to left-center field, tying the game at 4. WKU turned to sidearm specialist Drew Mesaris to keep the Owls at bay, and in the top of the ninth, Rardin brought senior closer C.J. Weins out of the bullpen.

“It’s always like a chess match out there, in those situations,” Rardin said.

Weins quickly retired the side in order, and in the 10th, WKU’s Mason Burns gave up a leadoff single before retiring the next three batters he faced.

That put the game in the hands of WKU seniors Tristin Garcia and Ricardo Leonett.

“These are the types of kids we’ll be recruiting, in the future,” Rardin said.

Burns (5-2) was the winning pitcher while Rice’s Justin Long (3-4) took the loss for the Owls.

WKU left-hander Devin Terbrak (5-3, 3.51 ERA) will be the Tops’ starting pitcher in Game 2 on Saturday evening. Right-hander Dawson Hall (6-3, 3.04 ERA), a true freshman from Bowling Green High School, will get the nod on Sunday.