Washington Huskies Baseball: A Gripe With The Pac-12 Network
By Evan Webeck
This may or may not be directly related to Husky baseball; I’m still collecting my thoughts, but I’m certainly a little disgruntled.
Sunday, the Pac-12 Network decided to broadcast the second straight Washington-Utah baseball game live from Husky Ballpark. This was a matchup between a 19-30 Washington team and an equally bad or worse 17-28 Utah team. There was no hype at the beginning of the season for these games, nor was there yesterday.
The other game Pac-12 Network decided was worthy for television was Arizona State-California. Admittedly, a better matchup than UW and Utah, but still not top-notch. ASU is a top-15 team, but Cal is below .500 and tenth in the Pac-12.
What games were not broadcast this weekend from the Pac-12? Conference leader and top-ten team Oregon State versus No. 19/21/25 Stanford (there are way too many college baseball rankings; I’ll use Baseball America from here on out, which lists Stanford at No. 25). Another great series took place in Los Angeles between the No. 8 UCLA Bruins and defending national champion Arizona Wildcats.
Not one of these games was televised, but Washington and Utah was? I would have rather seen Washington State-USC than Washington-Utah, let alone a couple of top-30 matchups.
One of the great features of Pac-12 Network is its live stream. A generally downgraded broadcast, sometimes put on by broadcast students, sometimes by radio voices or even Pac-12 broadcasters. This was not utilized efficiently by the network this weekend.
Instead of choosing to display the highest quality product it has, the Pac-12 put the spotlight on its lowest.
I wish I never had to be disgruntled about seeing a Husky sport, but there is simply better baseball being played by almost every other Pac-12 school right now. Utah, USC and Washington State are the only teams with worse overall or conference records. All four played this weekend and two were broadcast on television.
I don’t know if this is a calling-out of the Washington baseball program or if it is one of the Pac-12 Network, but I felt it needed to be said.
Lindsay Meggs and the Huskies have gotten some big wins this year, hopefully program changing wins. They swept a double header from Oregon State; they swept a very good Gonzaga team on the road; they beat Arizona 23-1! Unfortunately, before and after these impressive victories have been losses. A lot of losses.
Three losses to each UC Davis and Lamar to start off the season, an eight game losing streak before taking two from USC, another four-gamer before upsetting Stanford.
There are a lot of young contributors for this Husky squad, so one can hope Meggs is getting the ship turned around. They’ve overcome their early struggles to put together a pretty impressive stretch of baseball. If they’re getting the kinks out now, next season looks promising.
This season, however, I’d rather feast my eyes on Stanford-Oregon State or Arizona-UCLA. Even ASU-Cal, if I didn’t get Pac-12 Washington.