While many ASU students are gearing up for Spring Break next week, the No. 17 ASU baseball team is gearing up for its toughest stretch of games during the regular season.
The Sun Devils will play seven games in 10 days starting tonight at the first annual Whataburger College Classic in Corpus Christi, Texas.
"We've been on a tough stretch and we've won nine of our last 10 games," ASU coach Pat Murphy said. "So we're going to handle [these games] the same way we've been handling it."
Murphy will be without freshman catcher Preston Paramore for the upcoming road trip due to an injured hamstring. He would not name a definite replacement, but sophomore Austin Stockfisch and junior C.J. Retherford could both see action.
"We're going to tweak and tweak and tweak until it's just right," Murphy said. "We've got Paramore down with a hamstring, so we have to tweak some more."
The teams that ASU will face are just as grueling as the schedule itself. Two ranked teams are on the docket with another that was ranked previously this season. But first the Sun Devils will face host Texas A&M Corpus Christi (9-8).
"I have a friend that plays for [Texas A&M Corpus Christi], and he says they're all right," senior pitcher Brett Bordes said. "We can't take them lightly, though. They have a really good pitcher who's going to face us."
That pitcher is senior lefty Josh Mitchell. The junior-college transfer led the Islanders with four complete games in 2005.
Freshman Ike Davis will get the start for ASU after garnering Collegiate Baseball and Pac-10 Player of the Week honors last week. The left-hander blasted two grand slams and picked up a win in four games last week.
ASU will then move on to face No. 3 Rice University in a battle of two young lefties. 2005 Baseball America Freshman of the Year Joe Savery of the Owls will face ASU freshman standout Jeff Urlaub in the Saturday evening game.
The Sun Devils will close out the college classic against Texas Christian before taking the three-hour bus ride to Austin to face defending national champion No. 21 Texas for one game.
"[Playing at Texas] is going to be an unbelievable experience," Bordes said. "They have such a strong tradition and great fan support, and we haven't been to Texas since I've been here."
The last time the two teams met was in 2000, where the Longhorns took two out of three from the Sun Devils in the NCAA Regional, eliminating the co-Pac-10 Champs from the NCAA Tournament.
The Sun Devils will then return home for a three-game weekend series against Oklahoma March 17-19.
Reach the reporter at thomas.j.kelley@asu.edu.
