Irish baseball continues to advance after taking 2 of 3 from NC State. The record now stands at 26-11 and 11-10 in conference. Currently ranked #25.
The Aggies crapped the bed this weekend. After flogging Arkansas' ace on Friday for 13 runs and an easy win, things seemed to be in order Saturday as well until the storms showed up and we needed a Thunderblanket. Game 2 was suspended going to the 7th with the Aggies leading 8-3. Sunday was a true team effort. Base running mistakes, fielding errors, bad pitching choices... All came together to allow Arkansas to rally to a 9-8 win in the continuation of game 2. The rubber match went no better. The Aggies barely came out of the dugout losing 8-2. Not a good way to go into showdown weekend with LSU. :x
I see Scott's AG's are still highly rated but seemingly struggling to the finish. The Longhorns are below .500 in the B12 just finished losing 2 out of 3 to Texas Tech with Baylor coming up to finish the B12 season. Sweep the Bears (unlikely) and we can finish .500 in the B12 and slightly above .500 for the season. Augie Garrido one of the winningest college coaches ever is on his last legs in Austin. Only question is will Steve Patterson buy him out. Augie is 76 but still wants to coach and says he can fix the program, he knows what he did wrong. Question is at 76 will he remember that tomorrow? :roll: Irish have definitely improved this year, one of the better ACC baseball teams this year. Only Louisville, Miami, FSU have better records. We swept FSU at home and just finished sweeping UNC at home as well. A Louisiana team came north for a series (Northwestern State) and took 2 out of 3 from us recently though so no need to get ahead of ourselves. We have 4 games left 1 midweek game with W.Mich and a road series with Boston College who is one of the worst teams in the ACC this year. So finishing 4-0 isn't out of the question. Do well in the ACC tourney and we might find ourselves back NCAA play... a far cry from where we finished last year.
Agree, Terry. I've been following the team's progress. They looked bad here in Indy, giving up the game to IU via multiple errors and bad base running, but overall they've played very well against tough competition in the ACC and have improved greatly over last year. I'm hoping that there are much better days ahead for the program.
Yep... the Aggies have struggled to do the little things for about the last 3 weeks, and when you do that against decent competition it almost always bites you. Not moving runners with bunts, booting routine grounders... missing tags. You name it they've done it. I joined Kesley for the Aggie's final home game yesterday, and it was more of the same. They were the more talented team, but a mistake here and there added up to a one run loss as well as a series loss. They truly are limping it in here at the end. What a great time to lose focus... :x
Feeling Cocky.... Canes are on an eight game win streak where they have scored 114 runs versus 10 in those games. Not getting too excited one game was 26-0 against the New York Institute Of Technology....
It's a little bit surprising that the ACC doesn't play a round robin baseball schedule, Miami is in the Coastal and the Irish in the Atlantic Divison of the ACC. We played UNC, Boston College, Ga. Tech, Virginia and Pitt this year in the Coastal Div. I guess next year we'll play Miami, and some of the other Coastal teams.
I'm surprised by that as well, I can't remember if we played last season or not.... If we both continue the course we may meet up in the ACC tournament...Hope you lose if we play though 8)
Not enough weekends in a season for a 14 team conference to play round robin. You have 15 weekends, assuming you started Feb 13. That would leave you two weeks to play OOC, then you'd start up conference play at the beginning of March. I guess it could be done, but it would kill off a lot of tournaments.
It's always interesting to look at the Baseball America Top 25. You always see some teams you don't expect to see. Northern Teams typically aren't highly ranked but Illinois this year is a top 5 team in the latest rankings. Dallas Baptist, Missouri State and Radford (?) are top 25 teams, hardly teams you'd expect to find in the top 25. Now FAU with the access to all that Fla talent is less surprising, I don't know about College of Charleston. Houston and Rice, local teams, are both in the top 25 and leading their conferences. Not really surprising as both have access to a lot of baseball talent in South East Texas. Texas not in the top 25 is still shocking.
Well the Irish have clinched a spot in the ACC playoffs with the win at BC yesterday and if they sweep it improves their seeding. Big turnaround, as I've said before, from last year when we played our home games on the road due to construction at Eck Field and finished dead last in the ACC. I know nobody really follows womens softball, but the Irish are hosting a Regional this weekend. Play Ball State today and Northwestern and Kentucky are the other 2 teams in the Regional. Irish are ranked 19th, Kentucky 25th and Northwestern #34, Ball State is the MAC Champion. BTW 6 of the top 10 in womens softball are SEC teams, with the Gators the #1 team going into the NCAA tourney.
My wife and I watched on TV (Big10 channel) the entire IU vs. Ohio State game at Bloomington last night, won by IU 6-4. I love watching college baseball. The teams are fundamentally sound. Team and individual enthusiasm abounds. Each player consistently puts forth 100% effort 100% of the time. As my friend and I were walking this morning on a trail (old RR track) near the YMCA, with our ND hats on, an attractive woman came toward us running in the other direction. As she passed, she said "go BC". I turned and said in a loud voice that ND baseball beat BC yesterday, 10-5. She didn't turn around, but I sure felt good venting my dislike for BC. :lol:
I pay attention to softball a tiny bit. Only because the Lady Aggies are usually decent. They have a cool little stadium across from Olsen field. They weren't good enough to host a regional this year, and have to play in Norman (a place with NO redeeming value!). Maybe they'll get hot and make some noise...
I like softball also and like Scott said it is because Alabama usually has a good team. The Tide softball team seems to be a little mentally tougher than our baseball team. 8)
Wow, not that it means a damn thing but finished the season with a 12 game winning streak out scoring opponents 170-21 during the stretch. Possibly moving into the top 5 tomorrow after sweeping Georgia Tech this weekend, our best output since our 2008 college series visit....Looking for home field advantage in the regionals...
The Hurricanes (42-13, 22-8 has earned the No.2 seed in the round-robin tourney and will be in PoolB with No.3 seed Notre Dame (35-19, 17-13) No.6 North Carolina State (31-20, 15-14) and the winner of No.7 Virginia (33-19, 15-15) and No.10 Georgia Tech (32-22, 13-17). Louisville (42-15, 25-5) heads Pool A, followed by No.4 seed FSU (37-19, 17-13), No.5 Clemson (31-25, 16-13) and the winner of No.8 North Carolina (32-22, 13-16) and No.9 Virginia Tech (27-26, 13-16) The Teams are guaranteed to play at least three games in the tourney against the other three teams in their pool between Wednesday and Saturday, with the title game Sunday.
However the ACC tournament turns out for ND, it's been a season of huge improvement over the past several years. It's hard to believe it's been 13 years since we made it to Omaha under Paul Manieri.