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Baseball: Lofty expectations – Trosclair living up lately for ULTim Buckley, The Advertiser, May 31, 2016
His resume was loaded coming into the season. Rawlings and D1Baseball second team All-American, Louisville Slugger and Perfect Game third team All-American. Sun Belt Conference first team second baseman and Sun Belt Tournament Most Outstanding Player. LSWA first team All-Louisiana pick and LSWA All-Louisiana Newcomer of the Year. The list of laudations last year was a lengthy one for Stefan Trosclair, especially after his 12th-inning grand slam in the 2015 Sun Belt tourney lifted UL to a title-game win over South Alabama. Perhaps overwhelmed a bit by trying to top it — or perhaps not — Trosclair did not exactly pick up where he left off in 2016. But the senior from Sulphur High has come on strong to close, and is a huge reason UL is opening NCAA Tournament play as the host when Lafayette Regional play opens for the Ragin’ Cajuns against Princeton’s on Friday night at M.L. “Tigue” Moore Field. Arizona meets Sam Houston State in the double-elimination Regional’s other first-day game. “Stefan had a lot of pressure and expectation put on him in the beginning of the year,” senior centerfielder Kyle Clement said. “To me, he met all those expectations — especially lately, he’s really turned it on. “He started off with the cycle at UTA, then he’s been hot ever since,” Clement added. “A good time of year for him to start hitting like this.” It really was a mean May for Trosclair, beginning with that rare feat during a 21-hit Cajun win on the first day of the month at Texas-Arlington. He had a game-winning double in the 11th inning along with two triples in the middle game of a regular season-ending series against UL Monroe. One day later, he had three RBI in a win over ULM to help UL clinch a share of the Sun Belt regular-season with South Alabama and help send the Cajuns into the SBC tourney as its No. 1 seed. Over four games in the tourney hosted by Texas State in San Marcos, Texas, and won by UL with Sunday’s 5-0 title-game victory over Georgia Southern, Trosclair merely went 5-for-14 with a triple, four RBI and three runs scored. He also matched designed hitter Brenn Conrad for team-high batting average during the tournament (with at least 10 at-bats) at .357. Now, after hitting just .188 through the first month of the season, and still not over .260 a month later, Trosclair has his season batting average up to .279 with 36 RBI. “He looks like the old Stefan Trosclair,” Cajuns coach Tony Robichaux said during the midst of the hot stretch. “That’s the thing. He looks so comfortable at the plate right now. He’s not hand-hitting. He’s driving the baseball.” Trosclair’s importance to the Cajuns cannot be overstated. So perhaps it is no small coincidence that UL has gotten on a roll just as Trosclair has. “When he goes, we go,” said Robichaux, whose Cajuns head into the Regional having won 10 in a row. The fact he could not get going early, Trosclair believes, is more a reflection of happenstance than the burden of expectations. He also doesn’t think it has anything to do with finally having settled into his usual at home at second — now that Alex Pinero is in at first base and Conrad, who had been at second, is being used exclusively as the DH as opposed to flipping back and forth between second and first. “It’s just one of them things, just how it all worked out,” Trosclair said. “But at the end of the day I don’t care if I’m hitting .150; as long as we go to Omaha and win a championship, that’s all I really want to do.” Getting out of the Regional, through a Super Regional — their roadblock the last two years — and back to the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska, for the first time since 2000 is UL’s ultimate goal. It’s also what has helped Trosclair even when some of the obstacles — like claiming a conference championship, winning 40 games before losing 20 and winning the SBC tourney — might have seen insurmountable for the 41-19 Cajuns, a team that is now in its fourth straight Regional. “We constantly remind ourselves about those goals during the season, and every day,” Trosclair said, “so we make sure we’re on track for them.” On a personal level, Trosclair combined refined mechanics with simple perseverance to combat his personal struggles at the plate. The key to it all? “I didn’t quit. I didn’t give up,” said Trosclair, adding he’s focusing on the inside of the ball and “just sticking to my approach, and not trying to do too much.” “I think it’s just the constant daily work, and just sticking to it in the cage, and sticking to the process,” he added. “Eventually the game will pay you back. They tell us that all the time: ‘Just stick to the process, and eventually good things will happen.’” Teammates sensed that, in time, they would. “It’s the postseason,” Clement said. “I knew he’d step up in the postseason.” “He’s just kept on coming,” Conrad added. “I can’t count on 20 hands, if I had 20 hands, how many times he’s smoked the ball right at somebody this year. I mean, if half of those balls fell he’d be hitting over .320. It’s just the way that the game works.” Or doesn’t, sometimes. Trosclair understands that, and really does put team needs above his own. “I try to help these younger guys as they get older,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of great guys on the teams, great friends, lifelong friends. “I’m happy to be able to play the game with these guys, and with a great coaching staff, and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”
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