Oklahoma State To Take On St. John's

Oklahoma State is hosting its second regional in as many years but will look to actually win this one.

To do so, the Cowboys (37-18) will need to take care business against ORU, Arkansas and St. John's, together the four teams make the Stillwater Regional one of the toughest in that nation. The Cowboys will begin their trek for a Super Regional birth tonight at 6 p.m. against the No. 4 seed St. John's, a team who is currently on a 15-game winning streak.

"I don't even think these guys knew we had a 15-game win streak," Ed Blankmeyer. "We just play baseball. We try to go out there and find a way to win each particular game. We've won them pretty, we've won them ugly, we've won one-run games and we've come from behind. We've won them in all kinds of different ways. We've won them with pitching and we've won them with hitting.

"We just try to go out there and play the best baseball we can on that particular day. If that's not good enough, then it's not good enough. It's been good enough for us so far."

Instead of putting the Big 12 Pitcher of The Year Michael Freeman on the mound in the attempt to end the streak, the Cowboys will stick with the guy who started every other Friday game, Jon Perrin. Perrin is coming off an impressive outing where he lasted into the seventh inning and allowed only one run in last weeks Bedlam game at the Big 12 Tournament.

Perrin is 6-4 on the season with a 4.29 ERA. Although the stats don't say he's the most impressive, when Perrin is on, he's on. If he can make it through the first few innings without a missing a step as he did in Tulsa last week, Perrin could have an outing to remember for Cowboy fans.

We're going to throw Jon [Perrin] in game one," OSU coach Josh Holliday said. "We feel like he's rested appropriately. He has pitched game one in pretty much 95 percent of our series since last year. We feel like we're putting a very good performer and a very good pitcher in position to pitch an important game one for us. It will be Jon Perrin tomorrow against St. John's.

"Behind that, we're going to use our bullpen aggressively and effectively, especially with knowing that Michael Freeman will be rested and ready to go in game two. We have those plans at this point. What we'll try and do with the lineup is match up our best nine guys based on that team's pitcher on that given day. We feel good about we're at in terms of that. We came back off of the conference tournament having not pushed anybody too far. We were careful not to push the bullpen guys too much, mainly so that they would be fresh and ready to go on Friday. I feel like we've got our guys in a good spot and ready to play."

The Red Storm (39-14) are also letting their ace rest and will start Cody Stashak.Stashak is 7-4 with a 3.32 ERA this year but Red Storm coach Ed Blankmeyer said they will stick by him.

If the Cowboys are able to get past the streaking Red Storm, they will face the Arkansas Razorbacks in a game that will feature the Collegiate Baseball National Player of the Year, Andrew Benintendi. The Razorbacks beat ORU in game one today 8-6.