The Road to Omaha: 2015 College Baseball Thread

One win away.

 

I went to the USC-San Diego St. game in Lake Elsinore. Great game that started at 3 pm and ended around 7:30. SC and Virginia are in the fifth inning at 10:45, which is 1:45 am for the Virginia players, who had to wait an extra 90 minutes for the game to begin.

Can't imagine USC will have any pitching left if they get to Monday

 

Lot of great late-night live college baseball and ESPNU is showing a rerun of a fucking softball game.

Rice and Houston tied 2-2 in THE TOP OF THE 20TH and USC and UVa tied 9-9 in the 8th but, yeah, we need to see a softball replay.

 

You take what you can get from a northeastern program. And their stadium only holds 3,500 (and that's probably a generous number).

 

That's an ACC also-ran going out west and sweeping a good regional without its best pitcher. Just more evidence that the conference sucks compared to those mighty West Coast teams.

 

Meanwhile, the NCAA refused to allow LSU to start its game against UNC-Wilmington at 10:15, saying it was too late -- and LSU's AD was PISSED about it.

theadvocate.com

 

I am not a fan of college baseball, but I thought that ESPN's "Bases Loaded" coverage was excellent. I am not sitting through one college baseball game, but coverage of 16 regionals? I am in!

Did I notice that several stadiums had brown astroturf painted around the bases and home plate (as opposed to dirt)?

 

I think USC took 4th or 5th in the Pac-12 this year. They were hot early but faded down the stretch. UCSB was the second-best team in the second-best conference on the West Coast and No. 9 nationally in RPI. SDSU was the tournament champ of the West Coast equivalent of the Big South, the fourth-best league (by a considerable margin) in the region. So it was a good regional I guess, but hardly stacked with West Coast elites.

The results of the last 10 years clearly show UVA has a far better program than USC, which gets by, to a large extent, on name recognition and a bunch of NCAA titles won in the 1960s and 1970s when the college game was 180 degrees different than it is today. USC's stadium and fan support are among the worst in the Pac-12. USC also made a number of bad coaching decisions, the first of which was firing Mike Gillespie (now at UC Irvine) in 2005, the last time they made a Super. I'm not sure Hubbs is the right guy either but he definitely has a USC-type attitude.

No one disputes the fact that the ACC is a good baseball conference, one of the top four nationally. But the immediate success of Louisville and ND, and its consistent inability to win a NCAA title (60 years?) make one think it is not as good as it is often made out to be.

Poin, a lot of schools outside the deep south have gone to all-turf infields (and outfields). The brown infield skin, home plate/warning tracks/baselines are just a different shade of FieldTurf that gives the diamond a more traditional look than the all-green turf infields and base cutouts of the Riverfront/Three River stadium eras.

If you live where it rains or snows and want to practice/play outdoors in January and February, turf is a prerequisite.

 

UCLA-Md ended at 1130 PDT last night and more NCAA ridicule coming. I have a friend who is an alumnus of the UCLA program from the late 40s. He endows a scholarship, donates and never asks for anything in return. He is 88 and can barely walk with a cane. He went the distance for both games yesterday, but the NCAA made him exit the stadium between games. He had to vacate then return to the same seat. NCAA idiots.

 

Chris, as we exited the Lake Elsinore stadium following Game 1 Sunday, there was a long line of people waiting to get in. The second game was scheduled for 7 p.m., but the first game wasn't over until 7:30, so some of those people may have been waiting in line for up to an hour. They cleared the stadium anyway, why not let them in to watch the end of the first game then re-enter for the second?

I wonder how many people were left when that game ended at 1:15 a.m.

 

11:30 pm on a Sunday night may be the only time the 405 on the Westside is clear.

 

Radford is apparently out of pitching.