CLEARWATER -- USF jumped out to a 7-0 lead on Connecticut, then gave up six runs in the fifth and saw the Huskies rally for an 8-7 win on a walkoff wild pitch in the Big East tournament Thursday night at Bright House Field.
USF (36-21) now has to beat Rutgers on Friday, then beat the Huskies twice on Saturday to earn a spot in Sunday's conference championship game. UConn (32-26), the eighth seed in the tournament, swept by USF in the regular season, gets today off and needs just one win Saturday to make the finals.
USF errors factored in both UConn's tying run in the eighth and the winning run in the ninth. USF opened the ninth with an error on a line drive to rightfielder Anthony Diaz, putting UConn's Stanley Paul on second base. With one out, Paul got to third on a wild pitch, and the Bulls intentionally walked the bases loaded. Reliever Jordan Strittmatter threw a second wild pitch and Paul scored the winning run without even a throw to the plate. …
Busy day in Clearwater leading up to tonight's 8 p.m. (or so) Big East baseball tournament game between USF and UConn, but on the drive in we had the chance to speak with USF's newest QB -- Penn State transfer Steven Bench, who announced Thursday morning that he had chosen the Bulls over N.C. State and Mississippi State.
Due to the NCAA sanctions at Penn State, Bench can transfer and play immediately without sitting out a year -- he'll have three years of eligibility with the Bulls and will compete with Bobby Eveld and Matt Floyd for the starting job this fall. Here's what the 6-foot-2, 210-pound passer had to say on a variety of topics:
Q: First, with your decision today, what won things over for USF? …
There is a prominent new challenger for USF's starting quarterback job this fall, as former Penn State quarterback Steven Bench announced Thursday that he will transfer to join the Bulls and be immediately eligible to play.
"I feel like it's the best place for me to go. The way they treated me down there on my visit was unbelievable," he said. "You could tell they went out of their way to make me feel wanted. They needed a quarterback, but they made me feel like they needed me to be their quarterback and that goes a long way."
Bench, who played sparingly as a true freshman last fall, will have three years of eligibility at USF -- he also visited N.C. State and Mississippi State in the past week before choosing the Bulls. He'll compete with rising senior Bobby Eveld and sophomore Matt Floyd for the starting QB job under first-year coach Willie Taggart.
Bench won't start classes at USF until July 1 with the rest of the incoming class, but he said he hopes to move to Tampa in the next week or two so he can better get to know his future teammates and the offense Taggart will be running.
CLEARWATER -- The day after he was named Big East Rookie of the Year, USF freshman Jimmy Herget pitched into the eighth inning, leading the Bulls to a 5-2 win against Rutgers in the opening round of the Big East tournament at Bright House Field.
On a day where the tournament's top two seeds lost their opening games, the fourth-seeded Bulls advanced to play eighth-seeded Connecticut at 8 p.m. for a spot in Saturday's semifinals. USF swept Connecticut on the road in the regular season, winning two one-run games and another in the 15th inning. Rutgers plays in an elimination game against top-seeded Louisville at 5. Third-seeded Pittsburgh and seventh-seeded Notre Dame also won in Thursday's opening-round games, beating St. John's and Seton Hall.
Rutgers had four hits in the first three innings, but Herget was able to get out of trouble and USF trailed just 1-0 on Brian O'Grady's sacrifice fly in the second. USF tied the game in the fourth, when Jimmy Falla reached base on a 12-pitch walk, advanced on a wild pitch and scored on Chris Norton's double. …
USF men's basketball coach Stan Heath has filled the first of three openings on his staff, adding longtime NBA assistant Mike Wells as an assistant coach.
Wells, 42, spent the last two seasons as an assistant on Paul Hewitt's staff at George Mason, but he spent 17 seasons in the NBA, working with two NBA champions in the 1995 Houston Rockets and 2007 San Antonio Spurs. He spent 10 seasons in Houston, moving up from assistant video coordinator to assistant coach, then spent time with the Lakers, Spurs and Wizards.
Much like Chuck Bresnahan did in bringing an NFL background to USF football, Wells has worked with a strong list of NBA coaches -- Rudy Tomjanovich, Gregg Popovich, and also Larry Brown while working as a scout for USA Basketball. Among the players he's worked with: Hall of Famers Clyde Drexler, Hakeem Olajuwon, Charles Barkley and Scottie Pippen, as well as Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili, Tony Parker, Yao Ming and John Wall. …
One potential venue that could be explored is Marlins Park, the Marlins' one-year-old stadium.
PONTE VEDRA BEACH -- As the American Athletic Conference looks at a new bowl lineup after the 2013 season, commissioner Mike Aresco said Tuesday that the conference will consider creating its own bowl game, potentially in south Florida.
"We think that's doable. We think the finances can work," Aresco said. "We think ESPN's done a heck of a job with some of the bowls they've created, and we think it's time we did something like that. We like the idea of it."
Miami already has the Orange Bowl at Sun Life Stadium, the home stadium for the Dolphins and University of Miami. One potential venue that could be explored is Marlins Park, the Marlins' one-year-old stadium. The Big East has a strong recent history with bowl games in baseball stadiums -- its current agreement includes the Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium and the Beef 'O' Brady's Bowl at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg. …
PONTE VEDRA BEACH -- Tampa has pulled out of consideration for the 2014 American Athletic Conference men's basketball tournament due to a scheduling conflict with hockey at Tampa Bay Times Forum, USF President Judy Genshaft said Tuesday.
it's also believed that the new conference's women's basketball tournament will stay in Connecticut, perhaps moving from Hartford to the Mohegan Sun casino. Memphis has emerged as a front-runner for the men's event, with the university's incoming interim president telling the Commercial Appeal he is "very, very optimistic" about the event going to FedEx Forum, home of the NBA's Grizzlies.
Tampa had been under consideration for both events, and the field of options was narrowed by league officials, with an announcement expected in coming weeks. The NHL requires its teams to reserve dates as being off limits in November of the previous season, so USF's move to the American came months after the window in which dates could be blocked off for hosting such an event. …
PONTE VEDRA BEACH -- Financial terms weren't released, but Mike Aresco, commissioner of the Big East and soon-to-be American Athletic Conference, said the league's member schools have ironed out a plan to split the conference's lucrative pot of exit and entrance fees, reportedly worth as much as $110 million.
Early reports had the three "incumbent" schools -- USF, Cincinnati and Connecticut -- receiving as much as $30 million each from that reserve, but the compromised figure is likely less substantial. With key football members leaving for other leagues and seven non-football members leaving (and taking the league's name along with), the remaining football members had a windfall to split with the new arrivals.
"There were a lot of predictions (that) it would be rancorous, all that money. It turned out to be extremely smooth," Aresco said at the league's annual meetings. "We made a fair and equitable distribution plan for the realignment money and the (NCAA) units left behind. Everybody's very happy with it. We pretty much gotten that done before we came down. All we're doing here is ratifying it."
PONTE VEDRA BEACH -- As commissioner Mike Aresco spoke Monday to football coaches who will comprise the new American Athletic Conference, he sent a clear message that the best way for the league to brand itself nationally is with signature victories this fall.
The league has 15 games against teams in the "power five" conferences -- against the likes of Notre Dame, Texas A&M, Michigan and South Carolina -- and each of those is a change the perception of the American for the better.
"I think we all understand that, considering the new format for the college playoff, you have to play those games and then you have to beat them," said USF coach Willie Taggart, attending the conference's annual meetings for the first time. "Perception is pretty much everything nowadays, so you have to go out and win some of those ballgames, so nobody looks at you as any less than what they are already." …
I'm here in Ponte Vedra Beach for the annual Big East (er, American Athletic Conference) meetings -- USF has a full contingent of coaches and Doug Woolard hear as the new league hashes out important things for this first season. In the next two days, the league could approve (but not likely unveil) its new logo, sites for men's and women's basketball tournaments and an agreement for divvying up all that exit-fee money.
First, there's an important weekend to recap -- USF softball saw its hopes of a return to Oklahoma City end with a pair of losses to Florida in Gainesville, with the Bulls managing only four runs in their four games there. USF men's golf just missed a trip to the NCAA finals, losing a sudden-death one-hole playoff with Oklahoma for the fifth and final berth from the Tallahassee regional. …
Florida senior pitcher Sara Nevins was nearly unhittable in the NCAA Regional against Florida Sunday afternoon, but two critical mistakes ultimately led to the Bulls' 2-0 loss.
Nevins gave up just one hit, but walked in a run, then allowed another to score when she hit batter Taylore Fuller in th fourth inning, leading to Florida’s 2-0 victory.
The Bulls scored just four runs in four games in regional play, which coach Ken Eriksen said just wasn't quite good enough.
“It’s about playing great defense, great pitching and timely hitting and we did not have the timely hitting," Eriksen said. "Untimely hitting today, we hit the balls at them, but good teams make those plays. So you have to play fantastic ball in the postseason. We played very good ball, but we didn’t play fantastic ball. And the University of Florida played fantastic ball so far in the regional. And I feel they are going to get better as the regionals go on. It’s not hard at my age to figure out that they are a contender for the national championship game.”
VIDEO BELOW: Ken Eriksen talks about tonight's victory over Georgia Southern
After suffering an 11-1 loss to the Florida Gators (54-7) in the first game of the Gainesville Regional Saturday afternoon, USF (45-15) survived a nine-inning thriller Saturday night, earning a 2-1 win over Georgia Southern to advance to today’s 1 p.m. regional final.
“I think it goes without saying that Georgia Southern’s kids today played their butts off,” USF coach Ken Eriksen said. “. . They were relentless in that game.”
The Bulls took a 1-0 lead in the second, and held it until Georgia Southern tied the game in the sixth after a leadoff triple by Alexa Lewis, who later scored off a single from Shelby Morrill.
As he has so many times this season, Eriksen relied on the one-two combination of pitchers Sara Nevins and Lindsey Richardson, but it was Richardson who came up huge in the bottom of the eighth. She entered the game with bases loaded and one out, struck out Kaitlyn Johnson looking, then on a full count forced A.J. Hamilton into a 4-3 play to end the inning and the Eagles’ threat to win the game. …
USF softball's dominant pitching hasn't dropped off a bit, as the Bulls' Lindsey Richardson and Sara Nevins combined for 18 strikeouts and a one-hit shutout, helping the Bulls to a 1-0 victory over Georgia Southern to open the NCAA regional in Gainesville.
All four Bulls hits came from twin sisters Ashli and Courtney Goff, who both had hits in the bottom of the eighth inning, with Ashli scoring the game's only run on a squeeze bunt by Kourtney Salvarola. The win was the Bulls' fourth shutout in a row, following three in the Big East tournament in Tampa.
The Bulls (44-14) advance to play Saturday against the winner of tonight's game host Florida and Hampton, with Saturday's winner advancing to Sunday's regional final. Times staff writer Antonya English is covering the game in Gainesville and will have a full story later. …
TAMPA -- Darryl "Cuda" Patterson, a point guard who played with Charlie Bradley at Robinson and USF in the early 1980s, died Wednesday night after battling a rare blood disorder. He was 49.
"Cuda was one of the nicest kids you'd ever want to meet. A wonderful, soft-spoken person," former Bulls coach Lee Rose said Thursday. "He was never a minute's problem in any way for me. Players all liked him, somebody they all admired."
Mr. Patterson was a star at Robinson, and after two years at Florida College, rejoined his friend and teammate Bradley for two seasons at USF from 1983-85. He averaged 12 points a game as a senior, helping the Bulls to their first-ever win at Madison Square Garden with 21 points in a win against St. Peter's, including 10 points in the final six minutes.
Bradley said Mr. Patterson helped him fall in love with the sport they would play together, starting with playground courts at the Ybor City Boys & Girls Club. …
It's been online since yesterday and will be in Friday's paper, so I'm both early and late in sharing a link to this feature on twin sisters Ashli and Courtney Goff, who have provided a spark to USF's softball team as the Bulls seek a return to the College World Series.
USF opens play in the NCAA regional in Gainesville on Friday afternoon, and the Goffs -- first and second on the team in steals while hitting at the bottom of the Bulls' lineup -- have come through with clutch plays for their hometown team, especially in Saturday's win against Notre Dame for a Big East championship.
-- Worth noting that USF men's golf made a strong debut at NCAA regionals in Tallahassee -- Bulls are tied for fourth out of 13 teams after the opening round. Chase Koepka and Richard James shot 4-under 68s and Trey Valentine shot 3 under, putting the Bulls in good position, with the top five schools advancing to the NCAA finals after Saturday's final round.
South Florida Bulls fans, you've come to the right place: the USF Sports Bulletin blog. Tampa Bay Times sportswriter Greg Auman, who covers USF, will post news and thoughts on the Bulletin, and we invite your participation in the comments area. Follow the Times' coverage of USF athletics on Twitter.
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