Lund Sets Career High for Strikeouts in Blowout Win for Cowboy Baseball
STILLWATER – Lund continues his dominant start to the season against Sam Houston.
Oklahoma State beat Sam Houston 20-0 on Saturday afternoon at O’Brate Stadium to improve to 6-3 on the season. Saturday’s came with the same fireworks offensively that Cowboy fans have seen over the past week, but it was Ethan Lund’s performance on the mound which will grab headlines.
Lund gave up a single to Bearkat left fielder Caleb Cotton in the first at-bat of the game before striking out the next 10 Sam Houston hitters.
“It was a pretty dominant stretch against an extremely competitive team that we were playing,” coach Josh Holliday said. “He got on a roll there and you could tell that he was very difficult to put in play.”
I could not verify with the athletics department whether or not 10 consecutive strikeouts is a program record, but the team in the dugout certainly reacted like it was when Lund left the mound after the third.
The streak was finally broken when Bearkat center fielder Jeric Curtis flew out to TP Wentworth for the second out of the fourth inning. The next two Bearkat hitters reached base before Lund struck out right fielder Sean Bazmore to end the threat and move his strikeout total to 11. He finished with a career-high 14 strikeouts in 21 batters faced.
Something notoriously difficult for pitchers is keeping a rhythm during long periods on the bench. Lund had to sit through back-to-back five run innings in the second and third.
“At one point I was joking about how long it was taking, but I had to just kind of stay locked in” Lund said. “They kept changing pitchers and that upset me a little bit but you can’t really be upset when the team is scoring runs.”
Kollin Ritchie capped the barrage in the second when he cleared the fans standing along the drinking rail above the visiting bullpen in right field with a three-run home run to give the Cowboys a 5-0 lead.
Alex Conover then tacked onto the lead with a two-run triple in the third to move the Cowboy lead to 8-0 before Ritchie brought him home with his second homer of the game, the second of three that he would finish with.
Other Cowboys who put a ball in the seats were Danny Wallace and Brock Thompson, as well as a debut home run from Deacon Pomeroy, who sent the first pitch he saw as a college baseball player 456 feet to center.
“I don’t know if I’ve seen that very often,” Holliday said. “Deacon had a back injury and missed the entire fall semester of work, but he has come back this second semester and made great strides as an offensive player.”
Lund entered the game with a 2.08 ERA across 8.2 innings pitched. The sophomore has quickly become a stalwart in pitching coach Blake Hawksworth’s arsenal.
“He has a great routine and he’s a very disciplined young man,” Holliday said. “Hopefully people understand the talent that we saw last year that we were so excited about.”
Equally as impressive as Saturday’s strikeout streak for Lund was the fact that he did not walk a batter. Lund had 11 walks over his two previous starts, which is the most of any pitcher on the staff.
“I honestly kind of had some big butterflies going into it,” Lund said. “I pitched here once last year and it was against Winthrop when it was like 30 degrees outside. Seeing how many people were here yesterday and today, it was just super exciting.”
Lund finished after six innings of shutout baseball. He gave up only three hits and recorded his second win of the season. The Cowboys also clinched a series win over the Bearkats.
