Nathaniel Callaway/The Lion’s Roar
The Matt Riser Show, held Mondays from 7-8 p.m. at Buddy’s Bar & Grill, is a radio show for the Lion’s Baseball team’s head coach to have a chance to discuss and talk about any past games, future games or any decisions he and his team have made.
On the episode for Mar. 20 he talked about The Lions’ previous 10 wins, and their wins against Lamar University, though eventually losing their fourth and final game. Riser explained that while it wasn’t preferable to lose, he was still pleased with his players’ performances.
“To take a three out of four week, there’s a 75 percent there, is pretty good,” said Riser. “You know you can’t win them all. Like I told the guys yesterday, we want to win every single game we can, and that one got away from us at the end yesterday. But yeah anytime you go and take a good two out of three in the conference weekend it’s good. You can just put in a good week for another one.”
After Sunday’s win against Lamar, the Lions had a 10-game winning streak, and Riser also shared some of how it feels to carry the burden of a double digit winning streak for a baseball team.
“Especially with the schedule we’ve had, it was a big day going into the season,” said Riser. “To be on a roll like we have especially going to conference, you know UNO, Lamar, those are two that are close in our conference this year. So with our preseason conference schedule to win all 10 in a row, it’s a pretty big deal. The way we did it, I think was more impressive. We got a lot of long run games. Friday night was a good home run game, we had to put in the play, come back a few times to bring that streak home. So, I’m very pleased and very impressed with just the way we handled some things. We continued to show up at the ballpark ready for each game.”
During the game, Riser decided to pull Jacob Seward out of a starting lineup position. He explained that his decision had to do with performance and what he thought was his ability to play well in the game
“We talked about how there’s a few guys who have a history on our side who just haven’t come to the party yet offensively,” said Riser. “Seeing those guys start on a roll was really good this week. But it was the situation. We just looked at and talked a little bit about Seward’s freshman year. He kept coming up on guys on base, he kept getting big hits and hit plenty RBIs his freshman year and his sophomore year as well. It was last year where he was kind of a little bit more selective in what he was trying to do.”
Riser talked about how he has been impressed with sophomore pitcher Corey Gaconi’s performance and how he has improved over the last year. “Just with what Corey’s done, he’s trained really hard and his transformation was just incredible,” said Riser. “He’s lost almost 35 pounds since setting foot on campus freshman year and he really just took it upon his shoulders to make sure that his body was in the best possible shape. Everything he’s doing is awesome and well earned and well deserved.”