There's a fine line between winning and losing. For the 2016 UCF baseball team, there isn't one easy answer.
Maybe the season - which ended on Friday with a 5-0 loss to Tulane in the American Athletic Conference Championship in Clearwater - would have turned out differently had head coach Terry Rooney not lost a couple elite high school players to last year's MLB Draft. There were the injuries too. Pitcher and infielder Kyle Marsh missed the entire season after undergoing Tommy John surgery. The Knights' anticipated third starter, Nick McCoy, suffered an forearm injury in the first inning of his first start and went on to miss the rest of the year. Several regular lineup players, including team leader Matt Diorio, were absent for an extended period of games due to various ailments.
On top of that, this was a largely inexperienced roster considering UCF graduated seven everyday starters from last year's team.
There will be more reflection in the days to come, but Rooney remains confident they're close to turning the corner in becoming a NCAA Regional team again.
"I know that going into next year, starting at this moment, we're ready to go," Rooney said after Friday's game. "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.
"You're a couple guys away. It kind of started, to be honest with you, last year. We lost four kids in the summer. Two kids were top-10 round draft picks. A couple JUCO kids with grades. It's the totality of the whole thing.
"To me, this is the way I look at it. You can sit back and certainly the end result is the end result but No. 1, these guys competed like crazy the entire year. Just look at it. Going down to today, the day before. Every single game that we played this year, these guys 100 percent were unbelievably relentless. I don't think anybody can sit and watch the 2016 Knights and say any different. What you can also say is there were multiple times where we were one or two pitches short. One or two pitches short on defense. One or two pitches short on offense. If that changes? All of a sudden you look up and it's a 10 or 15-game swing. That's college baseball. To get on the other side of that? We're very close. I'm very confident with what we have coming back and the kids coming in, the leadership that we have. We're right there and we'll be back where we need to be."
UCF ended with a final mark of 26-33 and 8-16 within the conference. Of those 16 losses, nine were decided by one or two runs.
"We're not far at all," Rooney said. "Look at this league. Go up and down our schedule, no matter who we played, how many games came down to one or two pitches? One or two runs? 70 percent of them? If you just get on the other side of that, you're inside the top 25 again which would have been for the fifth year.
"I feel great about where we are. I feel for these kids. The season is tough when it ends. You look back on it and see a lot of positives. I'll tell you, just standing over there, I see him in the corner of my eye. (Starting pitcher) Robby Howell, there's a great example of probably one of the greatest if not the biggest positive of the season of a guy leadership wise and making the jump. We're going to be in great shape. I feel good about it. I know the kids feel good about it. We'll assess some things as we meet tomorrow."
As for Friday's result, Tulane pitcher Alex Massey seems to have UCF's number. He shut out the Knights a month ago at home and did the same today, giving up just two hits spread across eight innings.
On the bright side, Cre Finfrock had his best outing in weeks. He limited the No. 11 Green Wave to just a run (a solo home run) through the first six innings before fatigue set in and three more came across in the seventh.
"Finfrock was awesome today," Rooney said. "That was awesome to see. That was the Cre Finfrock that we've all seen. The way he handled himself out there, composure, the attitude, he did a terrific job today... He needs to build upon that moving forward. We'll see what he does in the summer. He's slated to go to the Cape. Does he go to the Cape? Does he stay back and lift weights and kind of fine tune some things? We'll see. He and I are going to sit down and talk about that. The bottom line is what a terrific job he did today. That's guts. That's competitiveness. I think Fin was awesome."
Game Recap / Box Score
