Despite a valiant late comeback and a 9th inning Alavarez homer to cut the lead to one, the Dores fell to Ole Miss 8-7 tonight. In all likelihood, they will not be hosting a regional in Nashville this year, and while I speak only for myself, I'm not completely upset by this. Don't get me wrong, I would have loved to travel down to Nashville and experience the excitement of hosting (which I have been told was incredible last year), but I can't get past the fact that they didn't move on past the regionals last year. NCAA Tournament baseball is a strange creature, and the fact that Vanderbilt as the number one overall seed last year couldn't make it to the super regionals is evidence of that. Sure everyone would have liked to see them win the SEC tournament this weekend, but to be completely honest, I don't feel any better or worse about this team based on what happened tonight.
I still think they can get hot and make the unlikely run to Omaha just as easily as they can flame out and go 0-2 to start the tournament. So here's to that unlikely deep run to Omaha that will be infinitely more satisfying than last year's early exit. I guess that's just me though, and maybe I'm being overly optimistic. Leave comments below and we'll see if you agree.....
Saturday, May 24, 2008
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2 comments:
I know what you mean. Look at Georgia; the Dawgs were two-and-out in the tournament, but that doesn't mean they're not a good team who could easily go to Omaha. Just depends on who gets hot at the right time, just look at the Rebels.
Although an SEC championship would be nice, we all know what the real prize is. Vanderbilt won 3 out of 5 games, so that's a big improvement from that losing streak they were mired in coming into the tournament and hopefully will translate into success in the regionals.
More encouraging than anything is, like the CSS announcers were saying about Alvarez, was that he finished up a pretty lousy tournament (I think he was 3-21 for something like that) by hitting a huge home run. If anyone saw it, you know what I mean. Alvarez can put the team on his back if he's swinging a hot bat, and maybe a big home run could jump-start him.
However, I don't feel like Vanderbilt can all of the sudden make a big run to Omaha simply because their pitching has been incredibly erratic. All of the starters have been pretty inconsistent all season long; Cotham was doing well the last month of the season but then he got beat up his last two starts. And Christiani and Minor have yet to really have a string of solid starts.
A season of the pitching, both starting and relief, being consistently inconsistent is probably not going to turn around in time for the postseason.
But I'd love to be wrong.
i disagree
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