NCAA Baseball tournament play so far
The road to the College World Series has given us some of what we expected, some interesting developments, and a whole bunch of scoring to keep us amused
With the opening weekend of the road to the College World series in the bag, there were some interesting developments, some surprises, and a lot of what you would expect.
Number one overall ranked Tennessee opened their campaign with a 10-0 trouncing of Alabama State. Their pitching was, as you would expect, superb, with Tidwell carrying the heavy load for them and then relying on Joyce and McLaughlin to wedge the door shut.
In the interesting developments category, North Carolina head coach Scott Forbes was ejected from their game against VCU for arguing over two contentious plays. Following his ejection, it was announced that he has been suspended for two further games, meaning that the Tar Heels will have to get through the rest of the regionals without him.
In the surprises category, there were a few interesting upsets on offer, but the real eyebrow-raiser is the sheer number of runs that have been put up across the board.
Virginia Tech posted 15 on Wright State and then turned around and stamped 24 runs on Columbia. Stanford put 20 on Binghamton and Maryland topped Long Island 23-3. North Carolina scored 15 on Hofstra and then Georgia stuck 24 on them the next day.
Granted, all of these are top-ranked teams scoring big on number fours, some of whom are in the tournament for the first time. But not all of these surprising scores were Goliath picking on David.
Arkansas beat Oklahoma State by a score of 20-12. Auburn beat Florida State 21-7. These are giant programs all. None of these teams should give up the runs that are being given up at this tournament.
And then there was the giant killer, the one that always was going to be the danger man in the group, Texas State. After a season where they took larger schools apart, they have done it again, upsetting Stanford 5-2. While it is not entirely unexpected from the Bobcats, it certainly falls into the interesting development category. With one more win, they can make it to the Super Regional for the first time in program history.
With the regionals looking to throw up some interesting combinations, the Super Regionals are a whole new ball game. Who knows, maybe it is David’s year after all.