throwback

This is where I'm at - likely an 8, but still a chance at a 7, even though the committee doesn't seed for story lines. ::Wink:: I mean NU as a 7 and Iowa State as 2 in Omaha could just happen randomly, right?

Needed a nice, easy win today and got it and then some. Walsh responds to his first at-bats in a while in a big way. Good job by everyone of finding ways to get on base - 16 runs on 11 hits takes some work. Sears wasn't as sharp as normal, but he still puts up six zeros, and Worthley was really good, saving the rest of the bullpen for tomorrow. Shutting out that team on 4 hits is pretty impressive, considering their numbers coming in. Love our chances to finish off the sweep tomorrow. We should have almost all of our key bullpen arms recovered from Friday, other than maybe Timmerman, while Nicholls burned through a billion pitchers today. Hopefully Horn dominates and gives the bullpen another day off, though.

Wanted to mention how many good minutes Diop gave us - he got really lost on defense only once, but he battled in there overall. And that little baseline jumper was pure. For someone who's played as little as he has, to be on that stage and look like he belonged against Illinois' front line was nice to see. It'll be a big offseason for him developmentally.

Welp, that sucked. Shannon is as good as there is in the country when he's allowed to play like that and, to his credit, he took full advantage of how the game was being called. If he's allowed to play like that next week, too, that's an easy Sweet 16 team and maybe more. To Underwood's credit, taking that quick timeout 90 seconds into the second half did the trick. They turned it on after that. Thought we hung in there despite some horrendous foul trouble until Goode banked in that 3. That broke us. Saw some heads hanging on that one. Positive spin is that we now can get an extra day of rest and prep for the NCAAs. Don't have to worry about the nightmare of playing on Sunday and then having to turn around and get assigned a Thursday game. I am more confident than ever that we are really good. I think having a more free-flowing style of basketball, like usually happens in the NCAA Tournament, will benefit us versus the bull-in-a-China-shop style that B1G games, like today, sometimes become. It's usually all about matchups now, but I like our ability to match up with a wide range of styles against a similarly talented team in an 8-9 or 7-10 game.

One of these things is not like the others.... I mean it sucks being on a list of other top-level programs and seeing Colorado on there, but I guess learning how to put up with the peasants is part of what we have to do now.

To be fair, LeBlanc has worked directly with the baseball team for a few years, so these guys know him well, but still pretty damn funny.

I think CBS owes Kent Pavelka residuals after using so many of his call highlights today.

I see the team asked Dennis LeBlanc to jump into the winning team photo with them last night and he was yelling "we're 1-0!"

The one thing about RPI is our winning pct is a decent part of it - since we were 10-5, we can still ramp up our winning percentage a bit, where teams like FSU and A&M can only go down from where they are now. I still don't expect us to be anywhere near the top of the rankings by next Sunday, even if we with the other 7 games on the homestand, but we probably won't fall as far as I was initially thinking if we keep winning, thanks to the winning pct portion of the formula. Another gutsy win last night ... at least I think so. I was a little distracted. I do know that game was going to be the toughest of the 8-game homestand by far. A real chance now to go 8-0 here. Difficult, but a realistic chance. We'll see how much consistency we can build - we've shown plenty of ability to get into -- and then win -- tight, wild games. The next 7 games should be all about taking care of business in workmanlike fashion. College baseball teams that want to be highly successful must have that component.

N 71 I 68

By the way, Nicholls' starter tonight was a freshman All-American last year and is considered a pretty high MLB draft pick in 2025. He'll be a handful for us. Makes it even a little more surprising that we didn't flip Sears and Christo this weekend. Hopefully Christo is on his A game. Definitely cannot afford to fall behind 4-0 again tonight.

Thought I'd pop this in here one more time -- like taking a picture of the scoreboard after the first quarter -- but it's headed downhill starting tonight. Not too far down, hopefully, just have to win. We'll be one-third of the way through the season after this weekend, so RPI is starting to be meaningful.

And pitchers are so much more focused on velocity and spin rate - always trying to get swing and miss pitches. Guys that pitch to contact are becoming a rare breed. As coaches have more and more data, they can see trends that are successful and work to develop those trends. College baseball has so much more incredibly specific data available now than even 5 years ago. Honestly, I don't feel like most of our guys are overswinging or are reluctant to try to go the other way. The seemingly high K rate has been a bit perplexing to me, but Ks seem to be up so much across the sport that our results make a bit more sense. College hitters going for faster exit rates and the optimal launch angle are certainly on the increase, but college pitchers are also throwing so much harder and with so much more spin than they did in the recent past, it can't help but result in more swing and miss.

NU 79 IU 61 3

The way this ugly game is going, it deserves to go into 3 or 4 overtimes.

Was just wondering if that means he's going to do the 8 pm game tomorrow too. Hopefully TBD saves some of these bricks for tomorrow.

A little surprised we're leaving Christo on Friday, but this is his chance to show he belongs there. Nicholls can hit, so he needs to be more precise and accurate in the zone and not serve up as many hittable pitches as he tends to do occasionally. If it doesn't work this week, we probably shuffle next weekend in the last tune up before league play starts.

From inside the responses:

I would've guessed you would be pretty close to correct, but we actually are tied for 132nd with 133 Ks (8.87 per game). Some teams ahead of us on the list have almost certainly played more games than us, but still not quite as bad as I expected. Ks must be way up across college baseball. Stephen F Austin has struck out 216 times already. 19 games, but still 11.37 Ks per game ... brutal. Lafayette is second at 198 Ks in 15 games, 13.2 per game. https://d1baseball.com/team-leaderboards/ By the way, Nicholls is 7th nationally in batting avg at .349 - we'll need to be dialed in on the mound. We're tied for 86th in hitting at .281. We're also 3rd in fewest walks allowed at 37 - very impressive and exactly what Childress wants to see.

A split down there is a good, if unsatisfying, result. It's always tough to play down there. Frankly, we probably were a little lucky not to go 0-2 - WSU gave us a lot of free passes on Tuesday that they haven't done very often this season. Of course, we easily could've had 12+ runs Tuesday, too, so it probably all evens out. WSU's quick resurgence after significantly turning over its roster is probably a bigger surprise than what we've done so far. Going 1-1 shouldn't hurt us too much in the RPI department, especially if Wichita keeps pitching like they have. We really showed off the depth of our pitching staff down there (other than Clark), and I thought Harrahill showed some flashes even with a less than desirable start. I wouldn't hesitate to give him the ball again. I like how we're sitting in the midweek vs where we were last year, even though we upgraded the schedule strength in the midweek this season. Nicholls has a nice record, but they are not a team that's going to help our RPI all that much by the end, I'd imagine, especially when we're playing them at home. Frankly, the same can be said for this entire 8-game homestand. We won't be top 5 in RPI after next weekend, even if we go 8-0, but that's the way it works for northern teams. All we can do is dominate who's in front of us when the schedule strength dips. Need to get off to a good start by taking care of business this weekend. If Christo can right the ship from last weekend, I think we'll be fine. Falling behind 4-0 after one inning in three of our last five games is no recipe for success, though, so we need sharper starting pitching and defense out of the box. And cutting down on strikeouts on offense. Let's do that.