BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – Matt Ridings has accomplished about all there is to accomplish in his three years on the WKU Hilltopper baseball team. The team has made back-to-back NCAA Tournament appearances and earned a share of the Sun Belt Conference championship last year. Individually, Ridings has been an All-Sun Belt Conference selection each of the past two seasons and has been named conference pitcher of the week three times in his career.
And as a 25th-round draft choice of the Washington Nationals in the Major League Baseball First-Year Players Draft last June, Ridings could have passed up his senior season at WKU and started his professional baseball career.
But everything he and the team have accomplished so far isn’t enough for Ridings, and he chose not to sign with the Nationals and is back to lead the Hilltopper pitching staff in his senior season of 2010.
“He’s been the name of our pitching staff and the face of our program, and he has the ability this year to do some things that not many people in this history of college baseball have been able to accomplish individually,” WKU pitching coach
Matt Myers said.
Ridings was 8-2 with a 4.84 ERA in 2009 and is an outstanding 25-8 in his three years at WKU. He has been a reliable workhorse for the Hilltoppers, as he logged 102.1 innings on the mound last season and has thrown 291.0 innings in his career.
The Franklin, Tenn., native has some hallowed WKU pitching records in his sights in 2010, as his 264 career strikeouts are tied for most all-time and he is three victories shy of tying the all-time mark for pitching wins. With 83.0 innings pitched in 2010 he would tie the WKU career record, and just eight starts would give him the most in Hilltopper history.
Ridings put himself in position to set multiple pitching records with a great 2009 season that built on seven and 10-win seasons in 2007 and 2008, respectively. He pitched into the seventh inning seven times in 2009, including a season-high 7.1 innings at Louisiana-Lafayette on May 9. Ridings also allowed three earned runs or fewer in 12 starts.
Perhaps his finest conference start came against New Orleans on April 11, when he pitched seven innings and allowed just one hit and no earned runs. That start moved his record to 5-0 and lowered his ERA to 4.21.
But Ridings really shined on the season’s biggest stage in the NCAA Tournament. He got the Hilltoppers off on the right foot in the opening game against Missouri, working 6.1 innings, allowing five hits and striking out eight in an 11-5 WKU victory.
He came back on just two days’ rest to pitch in the regional championship game against Ole Miss and put in an incredible performance against Ole Miss’ Drew Pomeranz for seven outstanding innings. Ridings scattered seven hits and allowed just one earned run, but WKU ended up on the wrong side of a 4-1 decision and Ole Miss advanced to the NCAA Super Regionals.
So when Ridings takes the ball for the Hilltoppers each weekend as a senior in 2010, history suggests that the coaching staff can count on the right-hander to put in a solid, workman-like outing and get the team off on the right foot.
“I want him to leave here after going to a third-straight regional,” Myers said. “I want him to anchor our pitching staff, to be that guy that gets us our first win on Friday night and sets the tone for the rest of the weekend.”
Fall World Series Begins Tomorrow: The annual Fall World Series, a three-game intrasquad set that serves as the end of the fall baseball practice season, begins tomorrow at Nick Denes Field. Thursday and Friday’s games both start at 5:00 PM, and Saturday’s World Series finale starts at 10:00 AM. Each game of the Fall World Series is free and open to the public. For the past 10 weekdays, wkusports.com has featured a different element of the 2010 Hilltoppers in the "Ten About '10" feature series. If you missed any of the stories, you can catch up by clicking on the links at the top of the page.
