Terry Rooney confident UCF baseball can bounce back

UCF’s baseball season was one of frustration.

Even from the preseason and even from the first game, it was a series of frustrating moments, growing pains and inconsistency. The Knights lost several high school recruits committed to come to Orlando because of the MLB Draft. They had to scramble to bring in transfers to fill out the roster.

In the first weekend, the rotation got jumbled up when Nick McCoy left the first “Championship Sunday” game against Siena with a forearm injury. It took nearly half the season to cement Juan Pimentel to fill that spot. And there was the injury to Kyle Marsh to help in the bullpen and as a utility infielder.

The Knights were starting at a deficit. And the hits seemed to keep coming. Cre Finfrock had a strange arm soreness that limited his effectiveness and dropped him down the rotation. And there were various nagging injuries throughout the season.

UCF finished the year 26-33, the team’s first losing season since 2013. It was a bitter disappointment. And seeing as Rooney and the Knights have not reached the NCAA Baseball Tournament since 2012. These are not long droughts, but certainly more is expected from UCF.

There are a few fans calling for Rooney’s dismissal with the massive change that has occurred throughout the UCF athletic department since Danny White took over.

It is unclear what will happen. All Rooney is doing is looking forward to the future. And even in the immediate aftermath of Friday’s season-ending 5-0 loss to Tulane, Rooney was optimistic.

“I know that going into next year, starting at this moment, we’re ready to go,” Rooney told Brandon Helwig of UCFSports.com. “I think when you look at it with the pieces that we have coming back, with an incredible recruiting class, this is a team that no question is a NCAA Regional team. Should be at the minimum and a team that has an opportunity to compete for a championship.

“There’s lots of reasons (for this season). None of them are excuses. It’s just the reality of it. Going into the year we had a lot of kids, I think we had one returning starting position player, one returning starting pitcher. It takes some time. Tough schedule early. All of those things and the injuries. We never got in a flow as far as the consistency of it. That’s a big part of it.”

It was Rooney’s trademark confidence in his team and what they can do. But also a recognition of some of the realities and hardships his team faced throughout the year. This was not a season of straight lines.

Robby Howell’s emergence was the biggest surprise for the team. And there were solid performances at the plate from Austin Griffin and Matthew Mika. It all was not consistent enough.

The Knights, as Rooney put it, were consistently a pitch or two short. There were few true blowouts in UCF’s conference season — a 6-0 loss to Tulane and a 7-1 loss to Houston were the biggest deficits among five losses by five or more runs this year.

Even with all that, outside of Howell and Finfrock’s return, there is still a lot of question marks about UCF baseball as a whole. A supposedly strong recruiting class could help the team turn things around. It is still a long road to go though for the Knights.

The 2016 baseball season raised a lot of questions about the program’s direction. That is never a good thing for a coach when there is a new athletic director. Perhaps lightning can strike and the team can take a major step forward, reaching the potential Rooney has now publicly endorsed them for.

But this team was ranked in the top 15 last year before collapsing and missing the tournament entirely. This season, while certainly improving on those Sunday finishes Rooney loves to promote, the Knights never got on a roll and never threatened to make much of a run in the American.

That may be the lasting memory of the 2016 season and the lasting memory as Rooney’s future gets decided.

Pro Bowl announcement expected Wednesday

The NFL is expected to be at Camping World Stadium on Wednesday to officially announce the Pro Bowl is moving to Orlando in a multi-year deal. It has been widely reported Orlando won the bid to host the annual NFL all star game, which has been held in Honolulu, Hawai’i for the most part.

The Pro Bowl takes place the week between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl.

Orlando and Florida Citrus Sports have expressed lots of interest lately in bringing a NFL regular season game to Orlando. That always seemed a bit unlikely, but Orlando, one of the largest markets without a NFL team, certainly is a very good host city for a destination event like the Pro Bowl.

Orlando NFL fans will more than get their fix.

Scott Frost pleased with UCF’s progress

UCF is not acting like a program or a team that went winless in 2015. This offseason has had an injection of enthusiasm and more than a little bit of belief.

Thank Scott Frost for that.

The new UCF coach has been very pleased with his team’s progress. And despite last year’s struggles, expects his team to win right off the bat. Maybe not championship win, but he has been very pleased with the buy in so far and the progress the team has made.

“I am thrilled with the progress and thrilled with how eager the guys are to buy into what we are asking them to do. To be frank, we still have a long way to go to get where we want to go on the field,” Frost said at a recent Charge On Tour stop. “I think the guys on campus got a lot better, but we still have a lot of progress to make. Going into the spring game with a new system and getting used to how we want to do things, I was very pleased with the finished product.”

It will be a process for sure to go from what and where UCF was in 2015 to the fast-paced, running offense Frost wants for his team. This will be the story of the fall for sure.

The spring game showed the defense is likely ahead of the offense. ONly time will tell whether UCF can make some strong ground in its first year with Frost.