Creighton coach Ed Servais has his own way of bringing his Bluejays together, a rather unique way of building team chemistry. And no, it’s not a team bowling night or a backyard barbeque at Casa Servais.
Instead Servais piles his team onto a bus for a long road trip or two as a way of turning his Bluejays into a captive audience with nothing else to do but talk baseball and bond. And it seems to be paying off handsomely for Creighton this season as it goes into this weekend’s pivotal series at Xavier with a 32-11 record and a robust 10-2 mark in the BIG EAST. The Bluejays lead Xavier by one game in the standings heading into this weekend’s three-game set.
“Coach really loves these bus trips because they really bring the team together and I happen to agree with him,” said junior shortstop Nicky Lopez, a key cog in the Bluejays’ machine this season. “When we’re on an airplane everyone is really spread out and we’re not really close but when you’re on a bus you really get to interact with the team and play games and talk to them because you’re on a bus for 12 hours, so it really brings out the team chemistry.”
Back in March Servais took his Jays on a 10-hour trip to Murray, Kentucky, for a three-game series against Murray State. The end result was a three-game sweep of the Racers. From there the Bluejays hit the road for a mere three-hour jaunt to Lawrence, Kansas, to face the Jayhawks, but that game was cancelled. So it was back on the bus for the Jays for a three-hour trek to Manhattan, Kansas to meet the K-State Wildcats. And though the trip ended with an 8-2 loss, to loosely paraphrase the singer Meatloaf, “three-out-of-four ain’t bad.”
So faced with their biggest series of the season so far, in which the first-place Bluejays will take on the second-place Xavier Musketeers who are just a game off the pace, Servais had the team bus from its road game at Wichita last Tuesday to Cincinnati for the series that starts Friday the 13th. So just to do the math, that was four and half hours from Omaha to Wichita followed by a 12 and a half hour excursion from Wichita to Cincy. Talk about Road Warriors.
But no one, especially Lopez, is complaining about Servais’ “See America Tour.”
“We did it my freshman year when we went to Xavier and we did it once before this year and that was a pretty long bus trip, too,” Lopez said. “But it’s really fun. You get to know the guys better. You get to interact with not only your friends but also maybe those teammates you haven’t really connected with up to this point. So you really get to understand how each person works and how the team works. With team chemistry comes success on the field so coach is really big on getting to know your teammates and talk with them on these big bus trips.”
Some of what Lopez and the Bluejays talk about on those long bus rides is the unfinished business of the last two seasons. Creighton has reached the BIG EAST Tournament championship game in each of its first two seasons in the conference. Both times, however, the Bluejays came away empty handed. So Lopez and the Jays have re-dedicated themselves to making this season better than the last. And Lopez has certainly held up his end.
Last season was a forgettable one for Lopez as he underwent knee surgery and slumped badly at the plate, finishing the season with a .246 average. This year, however, it’s been quite the bounce back campaign for the junior as he is currently second on the team in average (.307), runs scored (31), hits (31), doubles (nine) and is tops in triples (five). It’s a much better season for Lopez, who felt frustrated by his lost campaign of a year ago.
“Last year was a very frustrating year,” said Lopez, who made the move from third base to shortstop last season. “I had a decent year my freshman year. So going into my sophomore year I was a little more confident and a little more was on my plate because they expected more out of me. But I didn’t have the year I wanted to offensively and with the knee (surgery) obviously it was very frustrating. I tried to separate hitting and fielding to the best of my ability but it was very frustrating thinking I was letting my team down. But going into this year I was really confident coming off my summer. The confidence was big this year and I knew if our team was going to have success I was going to have to step it up a little bit so I just tried to do so for the team.”
Lopez has more than delivered this season and there is no better stage for the Bluejays to make a statement than this weekend at Xavier, a series that could go a long way in determining the regular-season champion.
“This is a pretty big series but we just got to play one game at a time,” Lopez said. “We’re looking at it as not what we have to do, it’s what we get to do. The opportunity for us is there for the taking and we know it’s a big opportunity but we just have to take it one game at a time.”
Before the season Lopez and the Jays set a series of goals. The first one was to land a spot in the BIG EAST Tournament. So far the Bluejays are the only team that has already locked up one of the four coveted spots.
“Going into this year our ultimate goal was to get into a (NCAA Tournament) regional and go as far as we can,” Lopez said. “Just play it one game at a time and put ourselves in a good position toward the end of the season to win the BIG EAST Tournament, but also make the NCAA Tournament as well. Our first goal was to make the BIG EAST Tournament. It’s not a given. Only the top four teams make it so we’ve achieved that goal and when we get to the BIG EAST Tournament, (we want to) win that as well. That’s our next goal and once we do that we look to our other goals – making the NCAA Tournament and win a regional and then get to the super-regional and try to win that. This team can go as far as we want to. We have the pitching, we have the defense and we really haven’t played a perfect game yet where everything is clicking on all cylinders which is very encouraging.”
And if the Bluejays are fortunate enough to win the series against the surging Musketeers this weekend?
“If we pull it out here it will be a nice little trip back,” Lopez said.
All 11 and a half hours of it.