For Him, Wins Not Everything

It is early in the baseball season, but Azusa Pacific is enjoying the best start of any college division team in the Southland.

The Cougars, a perennial power in the National Assn. of Intercollegiate Athletics District 3, are off to a 16-3 start and have been rated No. 24 in the first NAIA rankings of the season.

However, Coach Tony Barbone is not about to get carried away with the team’s success. For one thing, there are more pressing matters on his mind.

Barbone is concerned about the health of his father, Robert, who has a serious heart condition and is awaiting a suitable donor for a transplant at UCLA Medical Center.

“Every time I get a phone call, I’m scared to death,” Barbone said. “I don’t know if someone’s going to be calling to say they’ve found a new heart or to tell me his heart has stopped.”

In the interim, Barbone said, the team’s early success has helped to keep his father’s spirits high.

“Right now he’s just biding his time, and he always asks how the team is doing and he just loves Azusa Pacific baseball,” Barbone said. “So when he hears about us doing so well, that’s really like a medicinal thing for him.”

There hasn’t been much bad news about the baseball team for Barbone to report to his father. The Cougars started the week with a 13-game winning streak--one short of the school record.

Their success has been a surprise to Barbone, who anticipated that the Cougars would face more difficulty in nonconference play, since most of their top offensive players from last year’s 34-12 squad graduated.

“We didn’t expect this kind of a start,” he said. “Obviously, we hoped for it, but we expected to struggle early with all these new guys here. We’ve jelled a little early.”

Barbone said he was concerned about the team’s offensive depth going into the season. But that hasn’t been a problem for the Cougars, who are batting .342, with a .625 pinch-hitting average.

“We’re more balanced than I thought we would be,” Barbone said. “We have 16 or 17 guys, and when we combine their strengths and weaknesses, we’re maybe 12 or 13 deep. I think a lot of guys complement each other, and as the season goes along, they make us (coaches) look like geniuses.”

The Cougar offense has been sparked by senior outfielder Chris Hanna (.400), junior outfielder Chris Garife (.415) and senior infielder Eric Jeffres (.386). That has helped make up for the graduation of All-American first baseman Carlos Salazar, the team’s all-round offensive leader last season.

The team’s pitching staff has already matched its total of three shutouts last season and has a 3.08 earned-run average. The leaders are starters Todd Long (5-0), Ralph Montenegro (4-1) and Craig Hale (2-1).

“Those are our primary guys, but if someone falters, we’ve always had a guy to pick up for them,” Barbone said. “Our pitching has kept us in just about every game, and our timely hitting has really helped us lately.”

Barbone is also quick to credit his coaching staff.

“They could all be (head) coaches somewhere,” he said. “They’ve all been here for four years and that adds to the continuity of our program.”

Despite the team’s outstanding play, Barbone said the top-25 ranking wasn’t expected and he considers it a bonus.

“I’m kind of like Buddha,” he joked. “I expect nothing and good things will come.”

The Cougars appeared headed for the NAIA playoffs last season, taking a 34-10 record into the final day of the district playoffs.

Then they dropped consecutive games to Cal Lutheran and had to settle for second place.

“We’ve got to maintain our (intensity) until the end because everyone in our district wants to beat us,” Barbone said. “Last year was a prime example. From the get-go we probably played better than anybody, and then on the last day of the season we got beat by (Coach) Rich Hill’s team.”

So, regarding that ranking . . .

“The important thing to me is I’d rather be there in the end instead of in the beginning,” Barbone said. “As far as rankings go, that’s nice, but your success at the end of the season is the frosting on the cake.”

Normally, Mike Sutton, Claremont-Mudd’s men’s swimming coach, wouldn’t be too excited about his team being the runner-up in the national finals.

But Sutton was beaming after the Stags placed second behind Kenyon (Ohio) in the NCAA Division III swimming and diving championships Saturday at Emory University in Atlanta.

Never mind the fact that Kenyon finished with 593.5 points, more than double the 280 his team scored--Sutton said he never expected the Stags to unseat Kenyon, which has won 12 consecutive Division III titles.

“We knew going into Atlanta that the team race was for second place,” he said. “Kenyon just had too many good swimmers to be overhauled. Kenyon was going to win on depth alone.”

Although Claremont has never won a Division III title, the Stags usually are not far behind Kenyon. The championship meet marked the sixth time that Claremont has finished second.

“We love Atlanta,” Sutton said. “In our four trips there to the NCAA championships, we have finished second all four times and we have had at least one (individual) national champion in each of those meets.”

Claremont’s lone individual champion this time was Ryan Teeples, who won the 400-yard individual medley for the school’s first individual title since 1988.

Sutton said his small contingent got as much mileage as it could out of the meet.

“It is safe to say that we got more out of our personnel than any other team in the country, including Kenyon,” he said. “We had just eight swimmers and one diver, and we were outnumbered by every other top team in the country.”

College Division Notes

California Collegiate Athletic Assn. champion Cal State Bakersfield fell a victory short in its quest to return to the NCAA Division II men’s basketball final. After opening the Division II Elite Eight Tournament with a 55-52 victory over Southwest Baptist of Missouri, the Roadrunners were eliminated in a 73-66 overtime loss to Bridgeport (Conn.) at the Springfield (Mass.) Civic Center last week. Bakersfield finished 25-8. North Alabama defeated Bridgeport in the title game.

Cal Poly Pomona has placed players on the NCAA Division II All-American teams in both men’s and women’s basketball. Terry Ross became the first men’s player to earn All-American recognition since Paul Scranton in 1963 when he was chosen to the National Assn. of Basketball Coaches Division II second team. Ross, a senior forward who was earlier voted CCAA player of the year, averaged 23.4 points and 9.4 rebounds a game this season. Forward Stephanie Coons, who was also voted CCAA player of the year, was selected to the Kodak NCAA Division II All-American women’s first team. The senior averaged 15.7 points this season.