Bear Down Wildcats

Literal last team into the field! LFG!

Wow.

Didn’t expect that so we are really playing with house money at this point.

Let’s shock ‘em - BTFD!!!

WOO-HOOO!!!

Totally unexpected. For once, the NCAA got it right: Stanford, Oregon St, Washington, Oregon, and Arizona. Nobody of significance left out. Guess we DID steal somebody's spot. Outstanding!

Hot damn! Let's make the most of this and kick some ass!

UC Irvine got jobbed. They were 8-1 vs the PAC and mid forties in RPI and were left out.

Who would have thought that late season game would have been so important.

azcat49 wrote: ↑Mon May 29, 2023 10:14 am UC Irvine got jobbed. They were 8-1 vs the PAC and mid forties in RPI and were left out.

Who would have thought that late season game would have been so important.

They were 49th in RPI, which is why they were left out.

ChooChooCat wrote: ↑Mon May 29, 2023 10:22 am

azcat49 wrote: ↑Mon May 29, 2023 10:14 am UC Irvine got jobbed. They were 8-1 vs the PAC and mid forties in RPI and were left out.

Who would have thought that late season game would have been so important.

They were 49th in RPI, which is why they were left out.

The RPI needs a serious overhaul.

Just seems several teams on the west coast were down graded by the committee.

Teams like NC St and maybe a few BIG teams seem to benefit from an inflated RPI while the west coast conference teams seem to have artificially low RPI’s.

I don’t study it enough but I just think any team that can go 8-1 vs the PAC conference is better then a NC ST team in the ACC

ASSU definitely played its way out but the rest of those teams should have been in

As long as FESPN has the tv rights and certain conferences aren’t connected to them, it’s going to be like this.

Holy shit that made my week.

I like this way of thinking.

It's interesting. You want to have a competitive post-season tournament. You're very fair, and you have the automatic bids to all the conferences, and all the highly rated teams get in. Then you fill-in the rest, using various criteria. Some want it to be very simple and automatic with conference finish or somebody's power rating showing the season's body of work. But just like in the basketball tournament, if a team relies heavily on one player, and they did great early, but he got hurt and they tanked late, it's taken into consideration beyond the overall body of work from all those early wins. Similarly, when you're down to the last few teams, do you go strictly by conference finish/power rating, or do you go by who's red-hot versus who's treading water if your goal is a competitive tournament? So for once, things worked out for us. And by happy coincidence, our rival wound up on the Sad Sack side of it, which makes it even more enjoyable.

We got a second chance. Let's make the most of it!

Selecting the last at-large bids for a college tournament is an impossible task. As long as the committee seems consistent, then at least you can see why some teams made it and others did not. It looks like this year, RPI and SOS were the the most important metrics used. Arizona had a higher RPI and more difficult strength of schedule than the schools left out.

So here's an overview. Baum-Walker stadium seats over 10K, if you include people sitting on the grass in left field. Dimensions are: LF 320, LC 375, CF 400 RC 365 RF 320. Weather should be mid 80s in the afternoon with about 50% chance of rain all weekend. You can fly directly into Fayetteville commercial, or I assume by charter. Depending on how you feel about the limited number of little regional jet flights from Dallas, it might be worth it to go charter. A little light on decent looking hotels, so they'll probably want to grab rooms asap. And from personal experience, they do the Oregon thing where you can't pump your own gas. (Too complicated...technical...more employement.)

Interesting, I thought New Jersey was the only other state that did the gas thing.

As you would expect, TCU is impressive. In terms of top opponents, in early season tournaments, they beat Vanderbilt and Arkansas and lost to Louisville. In home games, they got swept by Florida St and lost 2 of 3 to Texas and UNC Wilmington, but they took 2 out of 3 from Oklahoma St, Cal St Fullerton, and U San Diego. In road games, they lost 2 of 3 at Oklahoma and Texas Tech and got swept at mutual opponent West Virginia. In the Big XII Tournament (in familiar surroundings at cross-town Arlington), they beat Kansas, Kansas St twice, and Oklahoma St to win it. Here's their personnel:

Batting Order:
CF L Elijah Nunez Jr .295 3 HR 16 SB
C R Karson Bowen Fr .346 6 HR 8 SB
3B L Brayden Taylor Jr .305 21 HR 12 SB
1B S Cole Fontenelle Jr .328 2 HR 20 SB
SS R Anthony Silva Fr .346 7 HR 16 SB
2B R Tre Richardson Jr .302 2 HR 23 SB
DH R Kurtis Byrne Jr .287 7 HR 0 SB
LF L Logan Maxwell So .292 2 HR 4 SB
RF R Austin Davis Sr .279 7 HR 21 SB

Bench:
OF S Luke Boyers Jr .244 7 HR 6 SB
IF L Owen Blackledge .250 0 HR 0 SB

Pitching Rotation:
RHP Louis Rodriguez Fr 4.53 47.2 IP 49/12 SO/BB
RHP Kole Klecker Fr 4.04 75.2 IP 55/25 SO/BB
RHP Sam Stoutenborough Sr 4.31 54.1 IP 48/15 SO/BB

Closers:
RHP Garrett Wright Jr 3.38 24.0 IP 31/16 SO/BB 4 SV
RHP Luke Savage Jr 2.40 30.0 IP 18/11 SO/BB

Bullpen:
RHP Hunter Hodges Jr 2.53 10.2 IP 11/8 SO/BB
RHP Cohen Feser So 2.83 28.2 IP 24/6 SO/BB
LHP Ben Abeldt Fr 4.17 41.0 IP 57/19 SO/BB
RHP Cam Brown Jr 5.25 48.0 IP 55/33 SO/BB

We have been really good in neutral site games this year and hopefully May and then Zastrow throw well.

Like most regionals, they first game is very important. Need a quality start and beat up on that freshman pitcher with the bats

I know their 3rd baseman Taylor is a certain first round draft pick so we need to be careful with him

Glad to see the team took a charter to Fayetteville. Otherwise, travel looked a little funky to get there. Hopefully they found decent accommodations. At least it's not like the Lexington, Kentucky regional. They have some country music festival going on at the same time, so the hotels are all full. So UK is selling dorm rooms to the participating teams for close to $200 a night. That's with no maid service, no room service, and I'll assume no cable TV. Way to gouge, UK.

Fayetteville is actually not that hard to fly direct to. With Walmart, Tyson, and a half dozen trucking companies there, the airport gets a decent amount of daily flights.

A quick look on Google Flights, there’s one direct flight a day from PHX, the rest are through DFW.

It’s a second or third tier airport, similar to Tucson.

I guess I was more thinking of from major hubs. I had to fly in there twice a month for a while from Chicago back in the day and had lots of options. Charter is definitely the way to go from Tucson.

They had an Allegiant Charter. I guess they’re a sponsor of the conference.

Kiko boooomb. New RBI record

2-0 Cats. LFG!

Welp.

Ouch

Fire Lawn.

Well if the pitcher could catch with his calf….

If this guy is our best starting pitcher we are doomed.

They are raking this guy.

6 hits in the 1st inning. We're throwing batting practice out there for TCU. Just ugly. And way too many w strike hits.

He’s got a plus 5 ERA. So,in theory, he shouldn’t give up anymore runs until about the 8th inning.

Heck of catch

Postmaster wrote: ↑Fri Jun 02, 2023 6:34 pm He’s got a plus 5 ERA. So,in theory, he shouldn’t give up anymore runs until about the 8th inning.

More 2 strike baserunners. Just ridiculous. Awful. Not being able to put batters away goes to coaching. Fire Lawn.

WTF was Hale waiting for?

He is hanging everything

This is a disaster. Walty finally pulled.

Nice double play to end the inning

At least we're chipping away. Hopefully the bullpen can hold TCU from here.

11 runs on 16 hits. It's TCU batting practice out there. Just terrible.

Barf.
Hope for better tomorrow

We were playing so well during the Pac 12 tournament that it was easy to forget what a terrible team we've been all year, but boy was tonight a great reminder. With softball not even playing it would be great if we could at least win tomorrow and not completely embarrass our school.