TAMPA – The University of Tampa Spartans baseball team lost a game on Saturday, Feb. 27, against Valdosta State. They have not lost a ball game since.
With a series sweep against conference rival Saint Leo, the Spartans have won a record-setting 22 straight wins.
Breaking the previous record of 21 straight wins, the UT baseball team extended their new feat to 23 games after a win at Florida Tech on Tuesday, April 2.
Tampa is also now ranked number two nationally among Division II teams, setting their season-high in that category.
Spartan Head Coach Joe Urso believes that the players aren’t too focused on the win streak, although the consistent winning has done a great deal to boost their confidence.
“They’re a very confident group right now,” Urso said. “When they step on that field, they believe they’re gonna win.”
Coach Urso is in the middle of his tenth season as the Spartans’ manager.
Through his tenure, Urso has coached the team to three National Championships, winning two of them back-to-back in 2006 and 2007.
Though this year’s squad has set new records and may be headed to a National Championship, Urso doesn’t see many similarities in comparison to 2007’s team.
“It’s different in a lot of ways,” Urso said.”That 2007 team, they were coming back from a championship [with] a lot of experienced players. What will remain to be seen is [how] these guys [respond] as we get later into the year.”
The lone member of the current Spartan club that was a part of the 2007 National Championship run is outfielder Brett McKean. Just like Urso, McKean mainly sees differences in those two teams.
“I think this team’s a lot deeper than that team,” McKean said. “I think that talent-wise, we’re a lot deeper and the pitching is better as well.”
McKean is also the only current team member who has been with the Spartans all four of his collegiate years. While a handful of players are homegrown, a majority of team members are transfer students from junior colleges, other Division II schools, or Division I programs.
McKean credited Coach Urso’s emphasis on pride as the reason for a mix-matched team being so successful.
“Pride is the main thing that we work on. [Coach Urso will] say it; that every time you put on this uniform, there’s so much tradition, so much pride, and I think it gets the guys fired up a little bit,” McKean said. “The main thing is pride. That’s what we have and that’s what we go by every single day.”
Coach Urso feels that the returning Spartans do their part by teaching the transfers, as well as the underclassmen, the kind of winning mentality that UT is known for.
“The guys that return, they show those new guys what Tampa baseball’s all about, and that’s what we’re seeing,” Urso said. “We’re seeing these new guys understand what it takes to win in this program.”
While sophomore pitcher Max Kreuter thinks the Spartan winning streak is impressive, he believes the team is more focused on just taking the season on more of a daily basis.
“Right now I think we’re pretty much going game to game, just looking to win one at a time,” Kreuter said.
Fellow Spartan pitcher Carmine Giardina had a similar opinion as Kreuter did on the new record.
Giardina alluded to the win streak helping the team’s confidence level, but also noted that the team is more so focused on each individual game.
“We really think of it as one game at a time,” Giardina said. “It doesn’t matter if we’ve won three in a row, [or] 22 in a row; you’re always looking at the next game like you wanna win.”
As the season progresses and the NCAA South Regional approaches, Tampa finds themselves atop the Sunshine State Conference with 15 wins and no losses, which is another new record. The Spartans will battle Rollins, one of their conference foes, on Friday, Apr. 9 and Saturday, Apr. 10.
With a 35-5 overall record and 23 straight wins, it is no wonder that anything less than another National Championship title would make for a disappointing end to the season.
“If you go to Tampa and you look back, every year is a disappointment if you don’t win the National Championship,” McKean said.