2011 college baseball - Road to Omaha

So at the ACC Tournament, Miami and Virginia started playing again after a seven-and-a-half hour rain delay. Virginia takes the lead in the top of the sixth and it starts raining again. Umpire and grounds crew meet and apparently decide to try to get the bottom of the sixth in, even though it is pouring. Miami lead off hitter hits a high pop up in left field, but the outfielders can't see the ball in the rain and it drops for a triple.

After than they decide they are going to have a rain delay and grounds crew unrolls the tarp. But then it looks like the rain is stopping and they don't cover the field. After a few minutes they start playing again. After two errors in a row, Miami has tied it 3-3 and has runners on first and third with no outs. Crazy.

 

So, after throttling Liberty for a 13th straight time, Coastal Carolina with its again-gaudy record will have to beaten twice by Gardner-Webb (a recent football opponent of MSU ) to be kept from claiming the Big South baseball tourney title.

 

Virginia wound up winning 6-4 and after another rain delay, Wake and UNC got started around 12:30 a.m.

 

The strangest place to be right now is Baton Rouge, where one may feel disconnected from all this, but are probably ready to reconnect with it next week.

Just strange.

 

They'll get in for sure, but should be sent (for a rare time) to play in some faraway regional so we can see if the moxey carries them like it does when they are close to home. Will the Tiger faithful travel to California to a regional? That's a good team that's loaded with freshmen and sophs in the lineup. Great players.

 

LSU went to UCLA last year and, notably, did not win.

It's been tough sledding since the last national title.

 

I think Coastal may be in regardless ... Gilmore thinks getting to 40 wins should be enough given the Chants' history and the soft state of the bubble this year. Of course, losing two straight to a no. 5 seed in your conference tournament could kill those hopes, so the Chants better take care of business today.

Gardner-Webb pitched out of its mind yesterday. Should have been two shutouts but a two-out error in the bottom of the ninth of the Liberty game allowed an unearned run to score. A kid who had 30 innings in 30 appearances this year threw a 127-pitch complete game in the nightcap against a Liberty team that was mentally spent after blowing the lead to Coastal.

 

UCLA won at ASU last night. Oregon State lost to Oregon.
Beavers and Bruins tied for first, Sun Devils one game back.

 

It's been two years. And they lost to a team that was a game away from winning a national championship. You make it sound like it's been 10 years and they lost to Alcorn State.

 

Coastal won 6-1. Predictable. Whoever has to face Anthony Meo in Game 1 of a regional is going to have a hell of a time. Kid threw a no-hitter in the first game of the conference tourney. It wasn't a fluke. He's really good.

 

This ain't any program. For LSU hosting a regional usually a given. This is two straight years not hosting (they still might not make it) and a year of not even making the SEC tournament. That's pretty lean by LSU standards. It's like Duke basketball finishing 6th in the ACC two straight years and getting an 8 or 9 seed both years. For some programs, that's great. For Duke, that's a terrible slump.

 

Maybe I'm just more rational than most LSU fans, but I'd like to believe a national championship keeps you in good standing for at least a few years. If LSU has a similar year in 2012, then the grumbling can begin. Right now? Meh. It's not as easy as it once was to dominate college baseball, and I think most people realize that.